How Dogs Understand Death

1 How Dogs Understand Death

Like people, dogs may experience and witness the death of companions or loved ones in their lives, and how the owner handles death shapes the dog’s reaction.

When a housemate died, the owner tried hard to hide it and quietly buried the companion in the garden. At first the dog searched every corner frantically for its friend, until it reached the garden and realized its companion was there – then it sat in the garden for days, as if aware of what happened.

An owner who brought the dog to witness a companion’s euthanasia saw the dog act solemn like those around it, then become very depressed and sad; yet some dogs stay calm at a companion’s death, seemingly unaffected.

Can dogs understand death?

The above helps us glimpse how dogs see death. To a dog, death is less death than a parting; like a few-year-old child, they have no real concept of death.

Their unease comes from a familiar companion leaving. Some dogs seem indifferent because even with the companion lying beside them, they don’t realize the companion is gone for good.

Conversely, most dogs hold an ‘optimistic’ view of parting, which explains why some guard a companion’s body or the owner’s grave – they believe loved ones will return someday.

Since dogs can’t grasp death’s true meaning, is their sadness at a loss fake? Dogs don’t act; their grief is real.

But whether it relates to death is unclear; dogs may not understand death, yet they read people’s emotions – human grief at death affects them, so they too act depressed in that atmosphere.

Also, when dogs realize a companion or owner has left, they feel sad too, but this sadness differs from human grief at death.

After all, dogs can’t tell death from leaving; they grieve only the act of parting. Whether boarded, abandoned, or the owner died, once the dog senses a parting, the nature of its grief is quite similar.

Although much remains unknown about how dogs understand death, death does affect their emotions; when a dog is sad, the owner can give more love to help it through the grief.