How to help our pets through death & the bardo
I recently posted an article on How we Die, explaining the death process from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective. In it I outline the subjective experience of death. I also suggest why we can have some confidence in the explanation offered, being based based on the experiences of advanced meditators who, as a ‘side-effect’ of exploring specific meditations, simulate the death process.
The following article will be especially meaningful to readers with an understanding of death, the bardo state and rebirth, as explained in my previous post. In it, I deal with what we can do as our pet’s death approaches, during the death process and afterwards. I also address the sometimes difficult question of euthanasia.
As before, this post is part of a short booklet I have written at the request of my German publisher.
I hope you find it helpful!
Being calmly supportive for the sake of our pet
It is important to remember that what our pet is going through, and what we are going through, are two entirely separate experiences. This may seem obvious, but there’s often a very real risk of confusing our own thoughts and feelings for those of our pet.
It is deeply upsetting to be told that our pet is dying. It’s natural to be distressed that we are losing our dearly loved friend, or anxious that they may be in pain.
If we accept that our pet really does have consciousness, and that their mind will move on from this experience to another one, then we need to recognise that their thoughts and feelings must come first. It is they who are making the journey from this life into an unknown future. We will still be very much alive and here in the coming weeks and months. They will not.
We have a limited period in which to be of service—one that may have huge impact on their future experience. During this time our pet won’t benefit from us if we are weepy and distressed. Their state of mind is best helped if we remain as calm and lovingly supportive as possible. Therefore our focus, first and foremost, is on our pet’s wellbeing, not our own emotions.
Keeping our pet pain free and comfortable
Managing our pet’s pain is the priority as their life draws to a close. Because pets can’t speak or always overtly show they are in pain, we must observe them closely, listen to the advice of experts, and heed our intuition. If our pet starts reacting differently, for example, holding themselves differently or reeling away from us for no apparent reason, it may well be that pain medications are urgently needed.
There are wide ranges of both mainstream and holistic medicines to keep our pet physically comfortable. We shouldn’t hesitate to use them.
Meditating for a positive transition
This is our last opportunity to share our love and affection by meditating and reciting mantras. The association of mantras and meditation with a benevolent state is a powerful and positive legacy we can pass on to our pet. If we have already established this in everyday life, we have helped normalize a habit of inestimable benefit to their future wellbeing. Creating a gentle meditative atmosphere, offering mantras of Chenrezig or Tara, or reciting the Heart Sutra, for example, is an extraordinary blessing for our pets in their final days.
‘Reversing’ the grieving process
Gail Pope, Founder of BrightHaven, and a pioneer in the animal hospice movement, talks about the need to ‘reverse’ the grieving process. Instead of thinking and talking about our shared experiences with our animal companions after they have died, we should do so in their last days. Now is the moment to tell them how much we love them, and how much we will miss their physical presence. This is the time to relive memories, as we care for our beloved friend during their final time on earth.
Euthanasia
When our pets are seriously ill, it has become common to hear both pet lovers and vets talk not so much about ‘if’ a pet may need to be put to sleep as ‘when’. From a Buddhist perspective, euthanasia is to be approached with caution.
To give an example, a friend of mine, Hazel, was told by her vet that her dog, who hadn’t had a drink for three days, was terminally ill and it would be best to put her to sleep. Returning home with the harrowing advice, instead of going to bed as usual, that night she chose to sleep on the floor next to her beloved companion. In her heart she tried to send out the message to her dog: ‘Whatever you want, I’m here for you. Please tell me. I’m listening.’
In the middle of the night, she felt her dog stir before getting up, making her way to the water bowl, and having a long drink. This was a major breakthrough given the dog’s previous behaviour. Hazel had the strong sense that her dog wasn’t ready to go. The following morning, she took her to a pet naturopath. In the days that followed, the dog responded to the treatment, before returning to near normal health. All that happened over a year ago and her dog is still thriving.
Readers have sent me many stories of pets who were due to be euthanised, even to the point of visits to the vet for the final procedure, when they have had the feeling ‘my pet isn’t ready to go’. Being open to intuition, willing to listen to the still, small voice, has been the difference between proceeding down a course from which there is no return, and taking a different course, allowing their pets more precious months, even years, of life.
Can we always be really sure that death is certain, even when the vet tells us that it is? Vets are certainly knowledgeable, and often highly experienced, compassionate and wise. But they are not clairvoyant. Surprise recoveries are possible, as are unexpected rallies. When we euthanise a pet, we are stopping nature in its tracks, halting any possibility that our pet may, in fact, have more quality time to live.
We also need to be open about the awkward question: how much am I doing this for my pet, and how much for me? If my pet is free from pain, am I really doing this to help them avoid suffering, or so that I don’t have to deal with the pain of watching my loved one dying? Who am I trying to protect from trauma—my pet, or myself?
Traditional Buddhist teachings caution us on euthanasia on the basis that if it is our pet’s karma to experience pain, we can help with pain management. But what if we cut short that experience through euthanasia? Instead of pain mitigated by pain-killers, perhaps our loved one will have to endure it without? Surely that’s the last thing we would wish for them?
Also, some pets sense that death is approaching and begin preparing for it. We may even notice a change in their behaviour, like the way that cats will sometimes withdraw from the world to a cupboard or other hidey-hole. What is the karmic impact of ending their life prematurely? How will they cope with an abrupt physical and mental dissolution without notice?
Euthanasia: my personal view
We may, nevertheless, reach a point where we can no longer have confidence that our pet is free from pain. We know he or she is terminally ill. There is every chance that we have already prolonged his or her life for months or even years through medication. My personal view – this is not a Buddhist teaching – is that euthanasia, in this case, is less the artificial ending of a life than enabling a peaceful end to one that has already been artificially prolonged. I have been here myself with cats who were clearly miserable.
And my experience is that euthanasia at home is greatly preferable to the same procedure on the table of a vet clinic. Pressures of time and money are such that many vets may offer euthanasia only at their clinics. In such circumstances there is little opportunity for a sedative to be administered, or for a loving and meaningful goodbye. It seems a coldly sterile and dislocated way by which to end one of the most intimate relationships of our lives. And from our pet’s perspective, probably not the one they would wish.
Mobile vets offer a euthanasia service at home where there is the chance to sedate a pet with a painless injection, and leave the room, giving us the opportunity to be with our pet in a familiar environment, and to take our time saying our goodbyes, whispering mantras and communicating our gratitude and love, heart to heart. By the time our pet is fully sedated, the final act of euthanasia can be performed in a gentle way.
Being supportive through the death process
As emphasized earlier, physical death precedes the dissolution of consciousness. Even though your pet may have died so far as the vet is concerned, his or her subtle consciousness may still be present in the body. So don’t move it. Instead, give your pet the opportunity for consciousness to leave the body in its own time. There is no schedule.
Also, recognize that in this vital time of transition, because of your relationship with your pet you can exert a very beneficial influence. Continuing to be present for your pet, ideally meditating during the hour or two after the time of their physical death, is most useful. If, for some reason, you can no longer be physically present with them, then continue to meditate on their behalf elsewhere, dedicating merit from your practice to their wellbeing. Or if you struggle with meditation, perhaps make some kind of offering or be of service to others, dedicating the merit to them.
In some animal hospices, pets are given a full three days for their life energy to depart, during which they are left in a bed or basket. When one of our cats died, we left her on a towel on a sofa, in part so that her surviving sister was fully aware what had happened and had the chance to farewell her.
In the immediate aftermath of our pet’s death we may have a feeling of release, relief, of shifting energy, perhaps even of freedom as our pet moves on from an aged or sick body. Or we may simply be bereft at the loss of our beloved companion. Whatever our emotions, what’s important is to recognise that while life has changed for us, it has changed in an even more dramatic and potentially challenging way for our pet. But it is still within our power to help. Our focus needs to stay on them, not on ourselves.
How to benefit our pets in the seven weeks after their death
Our beloved pet may be in the bardo state for a maximum of 49 days. As described earlier, the very subtle mind of bardo beings is akin to that of a lucid dream, so that they only need think of a place and they are there. Through force of habit and connections to people, places and other beings, they will almost certainly return to their former home and companions. For this reason, the following guidelines are offered.
Meditating and reciting mantras
Our beloved pet, now in the bardo state, can still be positively influenced by our practice of meditation and mantra recitation, particularly if we dedicate any virtue arising from the practice for their benefit.
As Tulku Thondup says in his book Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth, 'Beings in the bardo, in particular, are very receptive to meditation and prayers, as they live in a world of thought.' He also suggests, 'Meditation is a more powerful way to help these beings than our usual discursive thoughts and feelings because it comes from a deeper, more peaceful level in our mind.'
While sitting meditation is powerful, we don’t have to wait until we are sitting on our meditation cushion, in a quiet room, to recite mantras. We can do so under our breath, as we make a cup of team, take a walk, settle in an armchair or and at other times in everyday life including those when, in the past, we were accompanied by our pet.
Given that ‘mini-death’ is experienced by a being in bardo every seven days, this is a particularly vital time to focus your attention and practice on your loved one - by the way, this applies to all beings, human and animal. We may mark a calendar with the day that our companion died, and on the weekly anniversary of that day, for seven weeks, redouble our meditation or charitable activities for their benefit. This is particularly the case on Day 49, which is our last chance to be of support, before the bardo being moves on into their next life—and we must move on with ours.
A suggested dedication is as follows:
By this practice of this meditation/virtue/generosity
May NAME OF PET, and all beings, enjoy love, joy, equanimity and higher rebirth,
Meet the perfect teacher and attain enlightenment,
For the benefit of all beings without exception.
Making offerings
Apart from meditation and Dharma practice, Buddhism encourages us to practice generosity, to whatever extent we are able, and dedicate the virtue for the benefit of the being in bardo. We don’t have to be rich to be generous. A poignant photograph I saw on social media showed a poor woman making flat bread to feed her child on a gas stove at the side of a dusty road. In the image she is shown pinching off a small piece to feed a nearby bird.
We may feed ducks, birds or other animals. We may send a donation, or a series of donations to wildlife or other charities. We may drop a few coins in a charity collector’s tin. When we do so, we recollect our pet and dedicate the virtue for their benefit.
Again, it is useful to time acts of special generosity on the daily anniversary of our pet’s passing, when their bardo state is in possible transition, and our positive influence can have greatest impact.
Keeping out the pet bowls/toys
At any time in the bardo, our pets’ minds may turn to their old home, and they may perceive what is happening there. To avoid creating possible distress, it’s best to keep the landmarks of their old life unchanged, as though they may come back to us at any moment.
It is kind to keep our pet’s feeding bowls, favourite rugs or basket in the usual place, as much as we are able. If the sight of these now unused items is upsetting, use this as a prompt to say some mantras, verbally or mentally, and dedicate them for the benefit of the pet. Think of them as prompts to help keep focused on our former pet’s welfare as they move through the bardo. We can still support them!
The practical and emotional advantages of Buddhist practices
You may be interested by the Buddhist presentation of death, bardo and rebirth, but not necessarily convinced by it. And that’s okay. You don’t have to believe anything. All that’s needed is an open mind. Unless you are convinced by a different model of the death process, here, at least, is something useful to work with. What’s more, the advantages of the practices outlined go well beyond benefiting our pets alone.
One of the most debilitating aspects of losing a loved one is the way that our thoughts turn to ourselves. How upset I am to lose this beautiful being. How bereft and lonely I am that they are gone. How my relationship with them was irreplaceable. The common element in all these understandable, natural but painful thoughts is: ‘me’.
By using mental habits and practices which have our pet as the focus of our thoughts, we shift our focus. When we are thinking about the wellbeing of someone else, we are, by necessity, not thinking about ourselves. And that pragmatic shift of focus means that we suffer less.
‘Suffer’ comes from a Latin root meaning ‘to bear’ or ‘to carry’. When we carry around our grief, by continually thinking about our own personal loss, we extend and magnify our pain. But if we can replace those thoughts with different, other-centric thoughts, not only are we better able to help our pet, we recover our own peace of mind faster and easier.
A particular benefit of the Buddhist approach to death is that the seven-week bardo period gives us a fixed period of time during which to focus our energies on the mind stream of our departed pet. By the 49th day, our companion has moved on. They definitely have a new life, a new reality. And that gives us permission to move on with our own lives too.
It is time for us both to embark on adventures new.
How to deal with your pet’s body
There comes a time when you need to deal with your pet’s mortal remains. Ideally, you will have been able to leave his or her body for a period of hours, perhaps even longer, if you feel this is helpful especially for other pets in the household to understand what has happened.
What next?
I am sometime contacted by anguished pet lovers who tell me that, often in circumstances outside their control, a beloved pet was buried when they wished him to be cremated. Or cremated when they wished him to be buried. Or left in a place they really didn’t want. Whatever the situation, the distress always arises from the belief that what happened to the pet’s body will, in some way, affect what happens to him next.
It doesn’t. The Buddhist view of death is that, the moment we come out of the clear light of death as a bardo being – something likely to happen within minutes or certainly hours of our physical death – we cease to identify with our old body. If a bardo being sees the body in which it spent a lifetime until only a short while before, it doesn’t even recognised the body as ‘me.’ It is now a different being, with a different subtle form.
As such, whether we cremate or bury a pet’s body is of no consequence at all to the former pet’s consciousness.
So unsentimental were Tibetans about corpses, that it was traditional for people to have ‘sky burials.’ The thinking behind this tradition is that even a corpse can benefit some beings, so the Tibetan undertaker would take a corpse to a remote, rocky outcrop, cut it into very small pieces taking care diligently to break and crush every bone. The body was then fed in tiny pieces to vultures.
You don’t find cemeteries in Tibet, or mausoleums or the other edifices to dead people that are so common in the West. That’s because Tibetan’s have the strong, cultural sense that we live among our former mothers, fathers, lovers and enemies. They are the people and pets in our lives, the strangers we have never met, whether here on earth or in other parts of the universe.
My personal preference is to bury the bodies of our animal companions deep in the garden. This is, in part, because I am sceptical about the offer to have a pet’s ashes returned from a crematorium. Such places frequently cremate multiple corpses at once, and it is impossible to tell how much of the remains you pay for are actually those of your own pet, or some other being.
Whichever way you decide, rest assured that what you are doing has no impact whatsoever on the consciousness of your former pet. They now occupy a very different reality.
Conclusion
I would like to end this short manual as I began it with an appeal to each one of you, dear readers, to take what you find useful from this book, and leave what you don’t. Far better to use one or two practices that resonate strongly with you than to struggle, with gritted teeth, through a checklist of ‘things to do.’
As discussed, the insights and practices I have outlined not only benefit the dying being, whose welfare is paramount. They are also about helping you through a time of potentially devastating personal loss. The Buddhist way of dealing with such trauma is not to pass you the tissue box and encourage you to vent, but rather to focus on the wellbeing of the one who has died. It is an intriguing paradox that when we focus our thoughts on others, even in a contrived, deliberate way, we feel less unhappy ourselves. Swapping rumination for assertive thoughts and actions delivers a better outcome for everyone.
I sometimes receive emails from readers saying how terrible they feel because they have only just discovered certain practices that would have been of tremendous benefit had they only known about them before. They feel awful about what they put their beloved dog or cat through.
If that has been your experience, reading this booklet, I can only pass on the wisdom of my lamas – and the practices described are nearly all the wisdom of my lamas – which is to say that the past is the past. If you can’t do anything about it, there is nothing to be gained from dwelling on it.
But perhaps there may be something you can do about it? Not going back in time, obviously, but maybe deciding to act in a more enlightened way in the future. Or to share your newfound understanding with others. Or to do for others what you wished you had done for your beloved pet, still dedicating the merit for their wellbeing. He or she is still out there in the universe somewhere, perhaps in an unrecognisable form. But you have shared a very close, karmic bond in the past and, who knows, you may well do so again in the future – or even be doing so now, without being aware of it.
The Buddhist view is that everyone close to us in this life is only there because of previous karmic connections. So rich is the tapestry of interwoven lives that it is best to assume that all beings may once have been our mother in a previous lifetime.
With this dramatically wider perspective, we can use whatever regret we may feel about the past to energise us to more virtuous behaviour in the future. Chances are that we will meet those we have been close to again. Through mindfulness, benevolence and practices like the ones outlined in this short book, may our interactions ultimately be a cause for all living beings to attain complete and perfect enlightenment!
May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness!
May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering!
May all beings never be parted from the happiness that is beyond suffering!
May all beings abide in peace and equanimity, free from attachment, aversion and free from indifference!
May love, compassion, joy and equanimity pervade the hearts and minds of all living beings throughout universal space!
You can read my article on How we Die from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective here.
As a subscriber to this newsletter, you support the work of The Twala Trust Animal Sanctuary which takes care of many domestic and indigenous creatures in Zimbabwe. Sarah Carter, who manages Twala, recently shared images of some late residents on Pet Remembrance Day. It seemed appropriate to share a few of them here:
Horace, the internationally famous, three legged vervet monkey with his long-suffering friend Isabelle.
This is a cat! Harry the caracal. Lord of the bed. Simply magnificent.
Smeegal, the serval, out for a walk with his friend Josephine.
I'm so very grateful to you for noting that sometimes, when our pet's pain is beyond our management, euthanasia is a responsible choice. My very experienced vet once told me that most people wait too long and their animal suffers, though I also appreciate your wisdom around 'listening' to your pet and giving things time to resolve, possibly for the better, should there be any possibility for recovery. I've learned a few things from this post that will allow me to do better with my 2 senior dogs when their time comes, and I want to thank you for being a light in what often feels like dark times, whether we are saying goodbye to our beloveds, or just coping with the vagaries of everyday life.
🙏🏽🐾 Hits all too close to home for our dogs, cats and horses. They are our "Kidz" and a huge part of our lives. I have come to respect their choice when it comes time for them to transition. Some have come as surprises and some after long illness. In three situations, (soon to be 4) the surviving partner choses to join the companion that has transitioned. So we have found ourselves saying goodbye to not just one 4-legged but two in immediate or close succession. 💔✨🙏🏽😢 Thank you for sharing this important information. At the end of the day, being there for them, being the last human they see, smell or hear is the ultimate gift of gratitude you can provide for them during their transition. Unconditional Love 💖💜🌈 xoxo