Mourning the loss of a pet? They want to help.

Ms Goodfriend, 79, who started counseling pet owners in 2005, attributed the spike to the pandemic, which she said made people “more aware of grief and more likely to express it.”

At Schwarzman Animal Medical Center, which has been operating in Manhattan since 1910, a free animal loss support group has been available to clients since 1983. Susan Cohen, 79, a veterinary social worker who came up with the idea for the group, said it started with about five people attending each in-person session. By the time she stopped working at the center in 2011, that number had doubled.

The demand for such meetings led the center to expand its offering: there are now several grief groups that meet via video calls a few times a month. One is for people whose animals have died within the past three months, while the other is aimed at owners who are still grieving over pets that have died within the past year. Judith Harbour, 40, a veterinary social worker at the center who runs the grief groups, recently started a third one for owners of dogs with serious health problems. Each group has 20 participants from across the country, and some have waiting lists.

Attendees come from diverse backgrounds, Ms. Harbor said, and range in age from 18 to 85. The pets they mourn aren't just cats and dogs; tortoises, cockatiels, parrots, lizards, horses and rabbits are also raised in sessions, she said.

Ms Harbour, whose role also involves daily supervision of individual clients and vets at the centre, said many group visitors have said they felt unable to fully express their grief over a dying pet with people close to them. Some felt judged for grieving their pets, she said, while others felt rejected by loved ones who told them to get another pet and move on.

She said the pain of a pet's death often goes unrecognized by a person's community and society as a whole: “When you go through something like that, you really feel unseen and kind of alone.”