Loving and Losing Pets with E.B. Bartels, Rev. Sarah Bowen, and Karen Fine DVM at Bark! Fest

Living with pets sadly means losing them too. There wasn't a dry eye in the house (in a good way) at this event.

Loving pets means thinking of them both in life and after their loss. In the poignant and personal Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter, E.B. Bartels takes us on a global tour of how we love and mourn our pets. Sarah Bowen shares her deep insights on the lives and loss of all animals—pets and wildlife—in Sacred Sendoffs: An Animal Chaplain’s Advice for Surviving Animal Loss, Making Life Meaningful, and Trying to Heal the Planet. And Karen Fine DVM’s heartwarming memoir about becoming a veterinarian, The Other Family Doctor: A Veterinarian Explores What Animals Can Teach Us About Love, Life, and Mortality, is full of tales about what we can learn from the animals in our lives.

We talked about:

• Why E.B. Bartels wrote her book and what she learned about how people memorialize their pets, including taxidermy and mummification
• The way that grief for a lost pet is often disenfranchised
• What an animal chaplain is and why Sarah Bowen wrote her book
• Blending science with spirituality, and practical tips to help when someone loses a pet
• What it's like being a veterinarian, and how Dr. Karen Fine was influenced by her grandfather
• The value of making home visits as a veterinarian, and helping other pets cope when one of their fellow pets has passed
• Plus each author did an amazing reading from their book

The quote by Irving Townsend can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/37516-we-who-choose-to-surround-ourselves-with-lives-even-more

Learn more about the authors:

E.B. Bartels: https://www.ebbartels.com/ 

Rev. Sarah Bowen: https://www.sacredsendoffs.com/ 

Karen Fine DVM: https://karenfinedvm.com/ 

Send us a text to say hello!

About the co-hosts:

Kristi Benson is an honours graduate of, and now on staff with, the prestigious Academy for Dog Trainers and has her PCBC-A from the Pet Professional Accreditation Board. She lives in beautiful northern British Columbia, where she helps dog guardians through online classes. She is also a northern anthropologist.

Kristi Benson's website Facebook

Zazie Todd, PhD, is the award-winning author of Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy and Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy. She is the creator of the popular blog, Companion Animal Psychology, and also has a column at Psychology Today. Todd lives in Maple Ridge, BC, with her husband, one dog, and one cat.

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