Direct Line Gives Grieving Pet Owners A Shoulder To Cry On
Thousands of pet owners struggle to come to terms with the loss of their pet and feel unable to turn to their friends and family for help, a new MORI survey by Direct Line Pet Insurance shows.
The research revealed that three quarters of all UK pet owners had suffered a pet bereavement and of those around 1.5 million owners found it difficult to talk to friends and family about their loss*.
Furthermore more than 1 in 3 of those that have lost a pet (37%) said they have never really got over their loss and almost 8 out of 10 (77%) said that losing their pet was like losing their best friend. In addition, almost a third (30%) said that it was a long time after their pet died before they bought another.
Technical details
* According to Mintel 2002 there are approximately 5.1 million dog owning households 5 million cat owning households, in the UK and of those 1.54 million households have at least one dog and one cat = 8.56 million households have a dog or cat or both. MORI interviewed 1001 UK pet owners by telephone in February 2002. The findings showed that 75% of cat and dog owners have suffered a pet bereavement (6,420,000). Of those 24% found it difficult to talk about their loss with friends and family (1,540,800).
