This study developed and implemented a group reading program on pet loss for pet owners who had experienced the loss of a companion animal or were anticipating such a loss, and qualitatively analyzed how the program operated.
Pet loss has been disc...
This study developed and implemented a group reading program on pet loss for pet owners who had experienced the loss of a companion animal or were anticipating such a loss, and qualitatively analyzed how the program operated.
Pet loss has been discussed as a form of disenfranchised grief that is not sufficiently recognized in society. However, in Korean research, actual cases of group programs combining reading and writing have not yet been sufficiently accumulated.
Therefore, this study aimed to establish the theoretical basis and book selection criteria for a pet loss reading program and to analyze how participants' experiences changed and were meaningfully reconstructed during the program sessions.
The program was conducted online over six sessions with eight pet owners in different positions: those who had recently experienced bereavement, those whose loss had occurred some time ago, and those experiencing anticipatory grief. The overall flow of the sessions was designed based on Worden's model of mourning tasks, while participants' reading responses within each session were analyzed through Hynes and Hynes-Berry's four stages of interactive bibliotherapy: recognition, examination, juxtaposition, and application to self. In addition, writing products such as photo essays, letters, and reply letters were examined from Neimeyer's perspective of meaning reconstruction. The data consisted of pre-program interviews, session transcripts, writing products, photographic materials, and post-program questionnaires. MAXQDA was used as an auxiliary tool for organizing data and checking meaning units.
The findings are as follows. First, texts functioned as a medium through which participants could indirectly express their emotions without having to directly disclose their loss experiences. Second, as the sessions progressed, writing activities became a central medium for application to self and meaning reconstruction. In particular, letter writing and reply-letter writing appeared as processes through which participants re-verbalized their relationships with their companion animals. Third, reading aloud and sharing within the group helped alleviate the conditions of disenfranchised grief and enabled participants to recognize their grief as a legitimate mourning experience. Fourth, participants reconstructed the loss of their companion animals not as a complete severance, but as a continuing relationship sustained through memory and writing.
This study is significant in that it qualitatively analyzed the actual operation of a group program combining reading and writing in the field of pet loss. By including both bereaved pet owners and those experiencing anticipatory grief, this study also showed that a pet loss reading group can function as a space of empathy and reflection for participants passing through the time of loss from different positions.