https://iheartdogs.com/this-is-why-dogs-never-die/
When you think your dog has died, it has really just fallen asleep in the world and now lives in your heart. And by the way, it is wagging its tail madly, you see, and that is why your chest hurts so much and you cry all the time. Who would not cry with a happy dog wagging its tail in their chest? Ouch! Wap, wap, wap, wap, wap, that hurts. But they only wag because they are so happy to be so close to you.
Whenever they wake up in your heart they wag their tail. After a few dog years, they sleep for longer periods of time and you will too. They were a GOOD DOG all their life and you both know it. It gets tiring being a good dog all the time, particularly when you get old and your bones hurt and you fall on your face and don’t want to go outside to pee when it is raining but they do because they are a good dog. So understand that after they have been sleeping in your heart, they will sleep longer and longer.
But don’t get fooled. They are not “dead”. There is no such thing, really. They are sleeping in your heart and when they wake up, usually when you are not expecting it. It is just who they are.
I feel sorry for people who don’t have dogs sleeping in their heart. They miss so much. Excuse me, I have to go cry now.”
https://www.popsci.com/pet-death-grief#page-3
The experts I talked to emphasized that our relationship to pet loss has changed over the last century. “It’s not surprising to me that we feel such grief over the loss of a pet, because in this country at least they are increasingly considered family members,” says Leslie Irvine, a sociologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder. And depending on the relationship, the loss of a pet can be more traumatic than the grief we feel after the death of family and friends. In part, this is because pets share some of our most intimate relationships—we see them every day, they depend on us, we adjust our lives around their needs—and yet publically grieving their loss is not socially acceptable.
We haven’t always felt this way, though. As a society, Irvine says, we’ve moved from thinking of pets as accessories or mindless pieces of furniture to thinking, feeling beings.