Honoring lives and legacies: Continuing bonds and meaning-making in dog obituaries across companion, therapy, and K9 contexts.

Abstract

The death of a dog often results in profound grief that is often disenfranchized. While memorialization practices such as obituary writing are increasingly used by bereaved owners, little is known about how these narratives vary across human-dog relationship contexts or how they function in meaning-making and continuing bonds following loss. This exploratory qualitative study examined how online obituary and memorial narratives reflect grief, continuing bonds, and legacy construction among companion dog owners, therapy dog handlers, and police K9 handlers. A thematic analysis was conducted on 102 publicly available online memorials and focused on how these narratives reflected relationship formation and attachment; role-based identities; experiences of grief and loss; and expressions of continuing bonds and legacy. Across all groups, obituaries functioned as sources for meaning-making, validation, and legacy construction; yet each group's writing reflected nuanced integration of emotional intimacy, continuing bonds expressions, and presentation of social roles and value.