The Impact of Loss: A Dog's Behavior After Losing Her Puppies

There's a street near my home in a small town — not quite a city, not quite a village. A stray dog once settled there with her two puppies, and what I witnessed over the following months stayed with me long after she disappeared.

What I Saw

I started feeding her regularly, and she settled into the street, nursing her two puppies nearby. After a while, I noticed one of the puppies was gone — whether it had died or been taken, I couldn't say for certain, but I never saw it again. She seemed noticeably subdued for a few days afterward, though she still had her remaining puppy, and that seemed to keep her going.

A couple of weeks later, I realized the second puppy was gone too. This time, the change in her was impossible to miss. She stopped eating the food I offered. She wandered the street for four or five days straight, restless and withdrawn, not settling anywhere the way she used to. I remember feeling genuinely worried about her, wondering how she would manage on her own. Then, one day, she simply wasn't there anymore. I looked for her daily out of habit for a while, but she never returned — until, seven or eight months later, I saw her again, just once, late in the evening. She looked at me, gave a small wag of her tail, and walked on. I haven't seen her since.

Was She Actually Grieving?

At the time, it was easy to assume I was just projecting human emotions onto an animal. But it turns out there's real scientific research backing up what I observed.

A 2022 study published in the journal Scientific Reports, conducted by researchers at the University of Milan, surveyed hundreds of dog owners about their pets' behavior after losing a close canine companion. The results were striking: around 86% of owners reported clear negative behavioral changes in their surviving dog, including reduced appetite, increased fearfulness, less interest in play, and a stronger need for attention from their owner. Dogs who had a close, friendly relationship with the animal they lost — including sharing food, as this street dog had with her puppies — showed the strongest reactions.

This lines up closely with what I saw: the loss of appetite, the restless wandering, the noticeable change in her energy and behavior. Researchers are careful about how they define this — some argue it's grief in a form comparable to what humans experience, while others suggest it may partly reflect disrupted routine or separation-related stress rather than "grief" in the human sense. But as veterinary behaviorists have pointed out, regardless of how we label it, the behavioral and emotional impact on the dog appears very real.

Why This Matters

It's easy to dismiss street animals as simply surviving day to day, without much emotional depth to their lives. But stories like this — and the research now backing them up — suggest otherwise. Dogs form real attachments, whether to their puppies, another dog in the household, or the people who care for them, and the loss of that bond visibly affects them.

For anyone who feeds or cares for street animals, this is worth remembering. A sudden change in behavior — reduced eating, restlessness, withdrawal — isn't always about food scarcity or illness. Sometimes, it reflects something closer to loss.

Final Thoughts

I never found out exactly what happened to that dog after she left the street for good. But watching her go from a settled, nursing mother to a restless, grieving animal, and eventually disappearing altogether, left a lasting impression on me. It's a small story, but it's one that science now helps explain a little better than I could have on my own at the time.