Guilt After Leaving a Pet Behind: What the Research Documents, and Where to Get Help Now

Talk to someone now

These three lines are open 24 hours a day, every day. The numbers and wording below are as each organization’s own website listed them on September 29, 2026.

Disaster Distress Helpline. SAMHSA’s page for this line says: “Call or text 1-800-985-5990.” In Spanish, the same page says: “Llama o envía un mensaje de texto 1-800-985-5990 presiona “2.”” For Deaf and Hard of Hearing ASL callers, it says to text or call 1-800-985-5990 using your preferred Relay provider. SAMHSA describes the service as available 24/7 to all residents of the U.S. and its territories who are experiencing emotional distress related to natural or human-caused disasters, and says: “There is no need to give any identifying information when you contact DDH.” A counselor may ask for some basic information at the end of the call. Those questions are optional and are meant to help SAMHSA keep track of the types of calls it receives.

988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call 988, text 988, or chat online at 988lifeline.org. Its site says: “The 988 Lifeline is available 24/7/365. Your conversations are free and confidential.” Its Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Hearing Loss page says you can reach 988 Videophone by calling 988 with a VP number, and “Send any message to 988 to start a text conversation.” TTY users can use their preferred relay service or dial 711 then 988. A Spanish-language site runs at 988lifeline.org/es/, and it says: “La línea 988 está disponible 24/7/365. Sus conversaciones son gratuitas y confidenciales.”

Veterans Crisis Line. Its site lists “Dial 988 then Press 1”, “Text 838255” and a chat option. It describes 24/7, confidential crisis support for Veterans and their loved ones and says: “You don’t have to be enrolled in VA benefits or health care to connect.”

Talking to a licensed mental health professional about this is a reasonable next step, and you can take it at any point, including now.

If what you need is practical disaster help rather than counseling, SAMHSA’s Disaster Distress Helpline page also directs readers to call 211 for information about disaster-related evacuations, shelters, food and clothing distribution, volunteer opportunities and other referrals, or to use the national 211 Call Center website to find the nearest 211 center.

What this page covers

The rest of this page reports what one peer-reviewed study documented about the circumstances of one disaster, what pet-loss support lines exist and what their operators say about them, and where to find help with the practical questions. It does not tell you how to feel, and it makes no ruling on your own evacuation, which it knows nothing about. It offers no diagnosis, timeline or exercises. A licensed mental health professional can work with you on those, if you want one.

The study: Marshall Fire, Colorado

The paper is “Pet Loss in an Urban Firestorm: Grief and Hope after Colorado’s Marshall Fire” by Leslie Irvine of the University of Colorado Boulder and Casara Andre of the Front Range Veterinary Medical Reserve Corps. It was published in the journal Animals on January 26, 2023, and it is open access.

The Marshall Fire began in open grassland in Boulder County, Colorado on December 30, 2021 and became what the paper calls an urban firestorm when it reached dense neighborhoods. Per the paper, within six hours the fire destroyed 1084 homes and damaged 149 more, along with 30 commercial structures. It burned over 6000 acres, displaced over 30,000 residents, and 2 people lost their lives.

The authors interviewed eight owners whose animals died or were believed to have died, by phone or Zoom, for 30 to 60 minutes each within two weeks of the event. They also interviewed two staff members at the receiving animal shelter, held discussion sessions with veterinary professionals, and analyzed news coverage, the county’s evacuation orders and a community Facebook group that the paper says grew to over 20,000 members within days.

The research questions were what prevented pet owners from evacuating their pets to safety, and what, if anything, might have helped them save their pets. The question is not why owners chose to leave animals. It is what prevented them.

The number of animals. The paper declines to publish a hard death toll. Its summary says a precise count is not possible and that it is likely over 1000 pets died. It names two obstacles. One is the absence of a comprehensive pre-disaster census of owned animals: the City of Louisville requires dog licenses, but neither the Town of Superior nor unincorporated Boulder County does, not all owners license where it is required, and none of the three communities requires licenses for cats. The other is that reporting after the fire ran through a Facebook group, which required an account and the time and ability to post.

What the study documented

• People were not at home, for ordinary reasons. The fire started on a weekday between Christmas and the New Year, so many residents were working or traveling for the holidays. Many who were at home managed to evacuate with their pets. The paper also says that even those at home could not necessarily evacuate their animals in time.
• Getting back was physically prevented. The paper says road closures, dense smoke and fast-moving flames kept people who were not at home from re-entering their neighborhoods. One interviewee’s drive home, which normally took 15 to 20 minutes, took nearly two hours that day. He said: “I thought I’d have time to get home and get the cat, but nobody had access”.
• The alert system had to be opted into, and many people did not know that. The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office issued the first mandatory evacuation orders at 11:47 a.m. through the landlines, cellphones and email addresses of residents who had opted into the warning system. After the fire, many residents said they did not know they needed to opt in to receive alerts on their cell phones.
• A confirmation rate is not a delivery rate. The paper reports that of 24,289 emergency notifications sent, only 4637, or 19%, were confirmed as received. To be marked confirmed, recipients had to press 1 on a reverse 911 call or click a link in a text or email. The authors say many people likely received the notifications and dismissed the instructions, so the exact number received is impossible to know.
• An arrangement was in place and failed anyway. One couple left two cats with a trusted neighbor while driving back from another state. The neighbor’s home in Superior was among the first to burn.
• A pet sitter’s arrangement failed too. A Louisville owner who was away lost three dogs and a cat when the pet sitter left them behind. Neighbors watched him leave but did not know the animals were in the house.
• Cats could not be caught in the time available. One woman had seen smoke but received no alert. When a neighbor drove past, honked and shouted at her to get out, she ran back into the house for her three cats but could not get them into the carriers. She left thinking she would be back later that day. The road was blocked off when she tried to return.
• Even being present and organized was not always enough. Another interviewee had driven the family’s only car to check on a boarded horse, leaving her husband at home with two children, two dogs, two guinea pigs and a cat. He got the children and the dogs out. The guinea pigs ran off after being set down, and the cat could not be found.

The circumstances differed from household to household, but two ran through all of them. The authors report that all eight owners discussed the inability to return home, either because of absence from the area or emergency closures, and that all eight discussed pitfalls with emergency notifications.

Reasons from earlier research are not this study’s findings

The paper’s literature review summarizes earlier disaster research, mostly about other events. There the authors write that owners’ reasons for leaving pets behind often include thinking they would not be away long, give a chemical-spill example in which a response expected to take several hours took over two weeks, and add that other reasons include having no disaster plan, which leaves owners not knowing where to take their pets or unable to transport them.

That is a summary of other researchers’ findings. It is not what Irvine and Andre found in Boulder County, where the documented circumstances were people at work, people out of town, blocked roads, dense smoke, an opt-in alert system, a sitter who left and cats who would not go into carriers. If you have read that “the research says people like me had no plan,” check which sentence of which paper it came from.

What the paper says about the bond

The abstract states the claim the paper set out to test: much of the literature associates the failure to evacuate pets with a weak or absent human-animal bond, and rapid-onset disasters challenge the foundations of that claim. Its conclusion is that “the circumstances surrounding the spread of The Marshall Fire suggest that other factors need to be considered.” The authors add that researchers may have over-attributed the role of the bond, especially when examining decisions to leave animals behind, and failed to account for the contextual dynamics of the event. They say the fire’s intensity and behavior, together with pitfalls in the emergency notification system, “rather than lack of care for or attachment to animals” resulted in high pet fatalities.

The paper’s conclusions also say: “In the Marshall Fire, as in Hurricane Katrina and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, factors well beyond the control of pet owners prevented many from saving their animals.” The paper scopes it to that event: in its rapid onset in a highly populated area, the Marshall Fire was an unprecedented event in Colorado, and it showed how quickly a wildfire can become an urban firestorm.

These are findings about a documented set of circumstances in Boulder County in December 2021, published by two named researchers. They are not a statement about your evacuation. What the study gives you is narrower: evidence that the explanation you may have heard, the one about attachment, was examined by researchers in at least one disaster and was not what they found.

The limits, in the authors’ own words

On sample size, the authors write that “only tentative conclusions can be drawn from a sample size of eight people.” They proceeded because qualitative studies usually use purposive samples that provide information-rich sources. Of the eight owners, all but one were female and all were white, consistent with the affected communities. Participants were recruited through the community Facebook group, so they were people who found and used that group. The analysis does not include the fire’s impact on horses and livestock, fish that died when homes lost power, or most small animals, and the authors say the death estimates would be higher if records of other species were available.

In short: one fire, eight households, a self-selected sample. The paper’s review of earlier disasters reports other researchers reaching the same conclusion about attachment: of the roughly 200,000 pets left behind in Hurricane Katrina, “It is unlikely that this number can be attributed to a weak human-animal bond,” and of pet owners in the Fukushima disaster, decisions about their animals did not stem from a weak bond. Those are the paper’s accounts of other studies.

What the paper recorded about the grief

The authors write that all interviewees expressed feelings of sadness, depression, helplessness, anger and guilt related to the inability to save their pets. That is a record of what eight people told researchers within two weeks of a fire, not a description of a condition and not a description of you.

The paper also records that their grief was often disenfranchised: underestimated and unrecognized amid the overall tragedy and all that disaster recovery requires. The authors take the term from a separate 2022 study.

One interviewee, the owner whose pet sitter left, told the researchers her teenage daughter had begun therapy as a consequence. You can arrange professional help at any point, and you do not need to have reached any particular threshold first. The paper quotes that same owner: “Despite losing everything,” she said, “it’s the pets we grieve”.

The community response. Pet owners coped privately in various ways. In January, the Humane Society of Boulder Valley and a Boulder church held vigils for lost pets, and the paper notes a Louisville non-profit was raising funds for a public art installation in memory of the animals who died. The authors’ assessment is that such efforts recognize and validate the grief and provide social support by allowing owners to mourn openly.

Veterinary clinics were affected too. Veterinary clinics in the burn zone had few physical losses, but staff had losses of their own, including damage to their homes and neighborhoods, the loss of patients and the grief of their clients, and most clinics were already operating at or beyond capacity before the fire. In the immediate weeks after the fire, Colorado State University’s Argus Center and local pet loss support resources provided mental health support to area clinics and shelters.

Grief support that is not crisis support

These are limited-hours, volunteer-staffed pet-loss lines, and the institutions running them say they are not crisis lines. Use the 24-hour lines above first if you need someone now.

Cornell says it directly: the Cornell Pet Loss Support Hotline is not a mental health hotline, and if the concerns voiced on a call go beyond pet loss and pet grieving, volunteers will help you find appropriate resources. Cornell’s resource page lists the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) and tells anyone in a mental health emergency to call 911 or their local emergency service. One earlier passage on that same page still sends readers to the Lifeline’s pre-988 ten-digit number. The routes to use are 988, 1-800-985-5990 and 838255.

Each entry below is as the operating institution’s own website listed it on September 29, 2026. Confirm before you call.

Cornell Pet Loss Support Hotline, 607-218-7457. Cornell says it is staffed by volunteer veterinary students who have undergone extensive training with professional grief counselors. Cornell publishes no fixed schedule; its hours vary seasonally and may change with volunteer availability, so call for current hours. The call is answered through Google Voice, which will prompt you to enter your name before connecting. To remain anonymous, you can say “anonymous” or just enter your first name.

Tufts Pet Loss Support Helpline, 508-839-7966. The Cummings School’s page says the helpline is staffed from 6 pm to 9 pm Monday through Thursday EST and has 24-hour voicemail, and calls left on voicemail are returned at the next scheduled shift. The page has a section headed “But suppose my pet didn’t die…”. It says the helpline is available not only for people facing euthanasia decisions and that any situation where you are separated from your pet can be devastating. If your animal’s fate is unresolved rather than confirmed, the page says in writing that the line is for you too.

CVMA Pet Loss Helpline, (630) 325-1600. The Chicago Veterinary Medical Association describes a different mechanism: trained volunteers retrieve messages from the grieving and then call back to offer support by active listening, with printed materials and referrals when needed. Expect to leave a message and receive a call, not reach a person immediately. The association also runs a free support group, Wings, that meets by Zoom on the first Wednesday of every month from 7:30 to 9:00 pm. The page says requests for an invitation must be sent by 6:00 pm the same night, so you cannot join by turning up at the start time.

Pet-loss hotline lists go stale

The University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine posted a notice dated July 9, 2018, titled “CARE Helpline Has Closed,” saying the CARE Helpline is no longer in operation and the college no longer offers a grief telephone support service. As of September 29, 2026, the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine’s veterinary social work pet loss resources page still listed that Illinois helpline, with its old number, under Hotlines. The same list names the 988 Lifeline by its former name and old ten-digit number rather than 988.

Resource lists decay quietly, without anyone meaning them to. Confirm any pet-loss number on the operating institution’s own site before you rely on it, including the ones above.

Other questions, and the pages that answer them

If you do not know whether the animal died. The systems where found animals surface are covered step by step in finding a lost pet after a disaster, which starts with animal control and the microchip registry rather than social media. If an animal has already been picked up and you need it back, proving a pet is yours and reclaiming it covers what agencies ask for.

If the animal may still be inside a closed area. Do not drive at a checkpoint. Re-entry access to reach a pet in a closed zone covers which kind of restricted area you are dealing with and which channel matches it, and how to request a pet welfare check or rescue covers which agency takes the request and what makes it actionable.

If you are worried about the legal question. Is it illegal to leave your pet behind during an evacuation quotes five states’ statutes as those legislatures publish them and draws no conclusion about any individual. It also notes that the record of what happened is at its most accurate right now.

If the animal has died and there are decisions in front of you. What to do if your pet dies in a disaster covers custody of the body, local burial rules, cremation, and the one situation that must be settled before anything irreversible happens.

If you are asking why the shelter would not take your animal. Do pet-friendly disaster shelters exist covers what the PETS Act says, why general-population shelters usually cannot house pets, and what counties run instead.

If an animal did come back and is not behaving like itself. Pet behavior changes after a disaster covers housetraining regression, clinginess, hiding and noise fear, what the first weeks tend to look like, and when to call a veterinarian.

The rest of the library sits on our pet emergency playbooks hub.

What the evidence does and does not cover

The study above is one peer-reviewed paper about owners whose pets died in a rapid-onset urban firestorm, and it interviewed eight people. It reports what those eight said. It does not follow them over time, compare them to anyone, or predict anything about an individual. Nothing quoted on this page gives a timeline for grief, a set of stages, a threshold at which a person should seek professional help, or a procedure for handling it at home. A licensed mental health professional can do what a web page cannot, and arranging that is a reasonable step at any point, including before you are sure you need it.

If you need someone now

Disaster Distress Helpline: call or text 1-800-985-5990. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. Veterans Crisis Line: dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255. All three are open 24 hours a day, every day. For a mental health emergency, Cornell’s guidance is to call 911 or your local emergency service.