The grief of losing a dog can hurt as deeply as losing a person. And yet, so many people feel they have to apologise for it.

You find a hair on your coat and leave it there.

A few weeks ago, you would have brushed it off without thinking, probably muttering about how one dog could shed so much. Now you hold it between your fingers, this tiny, ridiculous thing, and find yourself crying when you were doing perfectly well a moment earlier.

Try explaining that to someone who thinks you have lost “just a dog”.

There is a special kind of loneliness in grieving an animal when you feel you must keep the worst of it to yourself. You tell someone what happened, see the brief sympathy on their face, then sense the conversation moving on. So you pull yourself together.

You go to work, answer the messages, say you’re all right. At home, their water bowl is still beside the fridge because you haven’t worked out how to pick it up yet.

The one who knew your ordinary days

We tend to tell the story of our lives through the big occasions, but dogs get to know us in the hours between them.

They are there while we wait for the kettle to boil, wearing the old dressing gown or PJs we wouldn’t answer the door in. They settle nearby during the phone call that goes on too long. They accompany us into the garden and inspect a perfectly uneventful patch of dirt with such interest that, for a moment, we stop thinking about whatever has been worrying us.

Over the years, we talk to them without much thought about how much we are saying. Sometimes it is nonsense delivered in a voice we hope the neighbours can’t hear; sometimes we tell them things we haven’t found a way to tell anyone else.

Dogs become familiar with us in a way few people have the opportunity to be. They are there for so much of the life nobody photographs.

For someone living alone, a dog may be the only company at breakfast, the reason to put shoes on and go outside, the beginning of a conversation with another person at the park. After retirement, or when the children leave, those small encounters can become a much-loved part of the day.

Of course their death can undo us. Just think how much of our living we did together.

You don’t have to justify the grief

For some people, losing a dog is every bit as painful as losing a human loved one. Saying so can feel almost forbidden, as though loving an animal that deeply somehow diminishes the people we have mourned.

There is no need to put those losses in order. We can miss our parents and still weep over the dog who sat beside us after their funeral. We can understand that others are suffering and still find our own front door almost unbearable to open.

Yet people who would never tell a bereaved friend to find another partner sometimes suggest another dog before the collar has been put away.

Maybe another dog will come along one day. Perhaps it won’t. Right now, you miss this one: the hopeless thief of unattended toast, the terrible passenger, the old companion who needed a little help getting up the steps.

Of course, you would happily lift them a thousand more times.

When the last day crowds out the others

For those who had to make the decision to say goodbye, sorrow may arrive tangled with questions. Was it too soon? Did I wait too long? Did they know I was trying to help?

That final day can be terribly hard to stop revisiting. You remember the room, what you said, the journey home. Years of companionship can seem to disappear behind the memory you least want to keep.

But there was a whole life before that day.

There was the young dog racing so fast around the garden that their back legs seemed to be overtaking the front. There was the holiday when they claimed the best chair. There were countless evenings when nothing much happened, and they fell asleep beside you, entirely at home.

Those days belong to them, too, and in time, they just might become easier to remember.

There is no deadline for washing their blanket, and no obligation to keep it forever. A photograph on the mantelpiece may be enough; you may want to talk about them for years. Anyone who has loved a dog should understand why a story that begins with their name can still make you smile halfway through crying.

And if someone you love is grieving, ask about that dog. Let them tell you how they got their name or what they used to do when visitors arrived.

Remember them out loud.

Somewhere, a person is hesitating before mentioning an old companion because they worry everyone has heard enough.

It would mean so much to hear, “Tell me about them.”