Weeks after Maria Sandomenico’s Chihuahua, Luigi, died last August, she shared a long post in a Facebook group for residents of the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn about how she was struggling to come to terms with her adopted rescue dog’s passing.
In an interview in January, Ms. Sandomenico said that in the seven years she had lived with Luigi, he had become her “north star,” trotting by her side in various custom-made clothes she had bought him. A pink and black pompom hat was his signature look, though he was also known to wear cashmere.
Ms. Sandomenico said she turned to Facebook when Luigi died because she didn’t want to burden her friends with her feelings, and because she craved connection with others who had experienced the death of a pet. She was surprised by how many people responded to her post saying they were also grieving the loss of an animal companion and didn’t know where to find support.
Not long after she posted in the Facebook group, Ms. Sandomenico, 53, who runs a dog walking and training business, met with several of its members at a local bar. She had invited them there for an informal grief-processing session. “Within like 20 minutes, everybody was breaking down in front of everybody,” she said. “They all have these really different experiences, except we all had the same, you know, feelings of just feeling like nobody understands.”
