Why it helps

If you have ever loved an animal and lost them, you already know what surprises everyone the first time: the grief is real. Not a smaller, politer version of grief. The real thing.

Research agrees with you. Studies of bereaved pet owners consistently find grief responses comparable to those that follow a human loss, and the same needs afterward: to feel the loss acknowledged, to stay connected to who was lost, and to do something with your hands and your heart while the hardest weeks pass.¹⁴¹³

That is why our keepsakes exist, and why they are free. A jigsaw puzzle, a paint by numbers canvas, a photo with angel wings. They are small things. But each one is built on an idea that grief researchers keep returning to: healing does not mean letting go. Psychologists call the healthy, ongoing connection to someone you have lost a continuing bond, and decades of work suggest that keeping one, gently and on your own terms, is one of the most natural ways people move through loss.¹²

Below is the evidence behind each keepsake. Where the science is strong, we say so. Where it is early or indirect, we say that too. Every source is listed at the bottom, and every one of them is real, published, and checked.

A puzzle made from a photo of your pet gives your hands something quiet to do while your heart does harder work.

The research grounding here is the continuing bond. In studies of pet loss specifically, most bereaved owners maintain meaningful ongoing ties to a pet they have lost through expressions like fond memories, keepsakes, and rituals, and researchers treat these bonds as a normal, often comforting part of grieving rather than a failure to move on.²¹⁵ Researchers have also documented how widely owners memorialize their pets and how personal those choices are.³ Reviews of the pet bereavement literature list memorialization itself as one of the recurring coping mechanisms bereaved owners actually use.⁴

A puzzle turns a photo into time spent with that photo. Twenty minutes of piecing a familiar face back together is twenty minutes of remembering with your attention fully present, which is precisely the kind of intentional, tangible connection the continuing bonds literature describes.¹²

To be plain about the limits: no one has run a clinical trial on jigsaw puzzles and grief, and we will not pretend otherwise. What the research supports is the ingredients: time with your pet’s image, a tangible act of remembrance, and unhurried attention. The puzzle is simply a warm container for all three.

Painting your pet, one numbered patch at a time, borrows from two bodies of evidence.

The first is the research on structured coloring and anxiety. In a series of small controlled studies, adults who spent time on structured coloring showed measurable drops in anxiety compared to free-form or unstructured activity, a finding first reported in 2005 and later replicated.⁵⁶ A week-long study in 2017 found that daily adult coloring reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms in the coloring group compared to controls.⁷ These are modest studies with modest samples, so the fair summary is that structured creative work may calm an anxious mind, not that it is proven therapy. That is exactly how we would like you to hold it.

The second is the research on visual art and bereavement. A systematic review of studies using visual art with grieving people found the approach feasible and frequently associated with reduced distress, while also noting the evidence base is still young.⁸

Paint by numbers sits deliberately at the intersection: the structure and repetition that the anxiety studies describe, applied to an image of your pet, which makes the finished canvas a memorial you made yourself. Making something for the one you lost is among the continuing bonds expressions bereaved owners report as comforting.²³

Adding wings to a photo takes about a minute. What it borrows from the research is older and deeper: the power of ritual.

When someone dies, we mark it. Psychologists have tested why. In a set of experiments published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, people who performed even simple, private rituals after a loss reported lower grief, and the effect held whether or not they believed rituals work.⁹ Grief theorists describe the same mechanism from the clinical side: mourning goes better when the bereaved can make meaning of the loss, and small symbolic acts are one of the main ways people do that.¹⁰

Pet loss rarely comes with a funeral. There is no service, no card from the neighbors, often no acknowledgment at all. Creating an angel wings image is a one-minute ritual you can hold in your hand or share: a way of saying, publicly or privately, that a life ended and that it mattered. Choosing a symbolic image of a pet is squarely within the memorialization choices researchers have documented among bereaved owners.³

We will not tell you an image with wings resolves grief. We will tell you that marking a loss, in a form you choose, is one of the most consistently supported small things a grieving person can do.⁹¹⁰

There is a name for grief that the world does not give you permission to feel: disenfranchised grief. The term comes from grief researcher Kenneth Doka, who defined it as grief that cannot be openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned, or publicly mourned.¹¹ Pet loss is one of its textbook cases.¹¹¹²

You may have felt this already. The “it was just a dog” comment. The workplace where a grandparent’s funeral earns bereavement leave and a fourteen-year companion earns a shrug. Research on bereaved pet owners finds embarrassment and loneliness are among the most frequently reported feelings after a loss, not because the grief is unusual, but because the support never arrives.⁴

The grief itself is not smaller. When researchers analyzed the language people use in online grief forums, the expressions of mourning for pets and for humans were strikingly similar.¹³ And the dismissal is not harmless: studies show that when grieving pet owners feel constrained from talking about their loss, depression and anxiety outcomes are worse, while self-kindness in grief is associated with doing better.¹⁴ A recent synthesis of the continuing bonds research in pet loss found that maintained connections to a lost pet are, for most people, a source of comfort rather than a sign of being stuck.¹⁵

This is the quiet argument of this whole page. If pet grief is real grief, then pet grievers deserve real tools, built on the same research foundations we would demand for any other loss. That is the standard we hold our keepsakes to, and it is why everything above is cited.

This page draws on published research, and on the humans who have spent their careers in this field.

Remembrance’s veterinary advisor is Dr. Liz Cahill, DVM. Our advisory board includes Coleen Ellis, founder of Two Hearts Pet Loss Center and author of Pet Parents: A Journey Through Unconditional Love and Grief, who pioneered pet-only funeral care in the United States, and Dr. Linda Harper, a clinical psychologist who has facilitated a pet grief support group with the Chicago Veterinary Medical Association for more than twenty years and whose books include Gifts of the Journey and The Power of Joy in Giving to Animals. They are joined by Poul LeMasters, funeral and legal counsel; Dr. Jessica Thomas, death care advisor; Ed Martin of Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, the oldest pet cemetery in America; Anthony Rossano; and Alex Hessler.

We built the keepsakes to be worthy of the people we ask to stand behind them.

Every citation below was verified against the original journal record before this page was published. Where the evidence is preliminary, we used words like “may” and said so in the text. Nothing on this page should be read as medical or mental health advice. If your grief feels heavier than you can carry, a pet loss support group or a counselor who understands disenfranchised grief is a real and reasonable next step, and we keep a list of resources for exactly that.