Grieving pet owner comforted by 'supernatural' touch

Less than a week after her golden retriever, Riley, passed away, informatics professor Jen Golbeck was sitting in her living room on a red and gray fleece dog bed “curled up like a croissant, as usual.” I found Riley taking a nap.

“It took me a while to think, 'That's not right,'” she said. “And when I looked back, he wasn't there anymore.”

To be clear, Golbeck doesn't believe in ghosts. But that moment was real to her. Like similar encounters for pet lovers around the world, the story was so real that it brought tears to her eyes as she tells it, and still does today.

In a paper published in a magazine anthropozoanResearchers at the University of Maryland responded to a question posted on her popular account @GoldenRatio4 detailing the adventures of a pack of golden retrievers, and found supernatural evidence reported by 544 dog owners on Twitter/X and Instagram. We analyzed the visit.

About half of them experience things like hearing the click of nails hitting hardwood trees, feeling a wet nose on their cheek, or feeling a warm, furry creature in the bed next to them. It was a physical symptom. The other half were signs such as seeing a butterfly or a rainbow (reminiscent of the famous poem “Over the Rainbow Bridge” about the loss of a pet) or meeting a dog in a dream.

Contrary to research showing paranormal phenomena to be negative, “generally these were peaceful interactions and were almost universally comforting,” she said. “Psychologically it was good for people.”

Mr. Golbeck's interest in this subject is both personal and professional. She and her husband, Ingo Burghardt, have lost nearly a dozen dogs since they started rescuing sick and elderly golden retrievers in 2017. And as a computer scientist trying to understand online radicalization, she dug deep into her psychology, earning her master's degree on the subject this semester at Harvard University.

Research shows that “people who see the ghost of a deceased loved one often call it a hallucination.” “Scientifically, that's true. But at the same time, I find the psychology of the experience very negative.”

In Riley's case, Golbeck believes that his guilt over Riley's death, however fleeting, brought him back into his life. He was seven years old when she and Burkhardt rescued him. However, he had to be euthanized after just nine months when it was discovered that he had kidney failure due to Lyme disease and gradually weakened.

“It's always hard to lose a dog, but when you feel like you may have waited a few days too long before euthanizing the dog, or that you didn't fulfill your responsibility to provide a gentle euthanasia, it's just a terrible loss. ” she says.

She says society gives pet owners little public space to grieve. While people are given bereavement days for the death of family members, discounted airline tickets to go to funerals, and sympathy if they start crying weeks or months later, the same Understanding does not apply to people who have lost an animal. But research shows that people form attachment bonds with dogs similar to those between mothers and children, Golbeck said.

“Don't say, 'You can buy another one!' You would never say that to someone who has lost a friend,” she said. “It’s really important to give people that space.”