Imagine: thousands of people in a grand hall holding their breath, their eyes focused on the stage.

The hosts finally open the envelope containing the winner’s name. After a pause that feels like an eternity, they finally announce, “And the award goes to…”

One more moment, and they will say your name. Get ready to step onto the stage and claim your prize. But wait… which award is it? Let’s find out in our quiz!

The Red Data Book of Ukraine currently lists 687 animals, each with unique behaviors and perspectives on the world. Which rare animal from our selection best reflects your character? Perhaps you like to delve deeply into things, much like the desman dives to the riverbed? Or maybe you’re keen on exploring new horizons, like the brave and curious lynx? Answer the simple questions in this quiz to find out which Red Book animal you most resemble!

“…I remember he was small because we put him in my small backpack. He was sitting there drooling, maybe he was hungry. We brought him home, and he peed like all little puppies. He cried a lot the first night. We made him a separate place on the floor, but then we took him into our bed. And he calmed down. He was very emotional.”

Yulia from Kharkiv remembers her dog. His name was Tymchyk. He hated fireworks, shed a lot and could hardly tolerate car rides.

When the full-scale war broke out in Kharkiv, they had to leave. Combat actions are not limited to one day, like fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

The family stopped in Kremenchuk and stayed in an apartment not very suitable for living. But they were happy they got out. And that they were together. All of them. With the dog.

“You must take the dog with you. Any animal, you must. A dog is a part of the home. When you take your dog with you, a part of the home goes with you,” Yulia recalls.

And then Tymchyk got sick and died. The family’s memories are tightly intertwined with a sense of guilt.

“I think the move affected his health. Moreover, he picked up a tick, and we didn’t notice and treat it in time. We are guilty too. Because we missed it, he got very sick. We barely saved him then. But there were still consequences for his health, from which, in fact, he got sick again and died,” Yulia recounts.

Guilt is what weighs heavily on the loss of a pet. And it’s something that almost all grieving caretakers remember.

Ruslana lost her cat, Pyrizhok, a few months ago. He was often ill, but then the worsening of his condition came like a bolt from the blue. The girl assumes that anesthesia during dental cleaning triggered a pancreatitis flare-up.

“I still haven’t come to terms with it. I have so many questions. I think only a professional psychologist can help me overcome this. It was not just the doctors who made the decision. In many ways, it was my responsibility, and I often wonder if I have made a mistake somewhere. Yes, we all make mistakes, but a mistake at the cost of an animal’s life is too much to bear,” she says.

The hardest part for Ruslana was the decision about euthanasia. While the cat was sick and in the hospital, he was getting worse. So the family was waiting for that very call. And one day it came.

“We were in the subway. They told us he couldn’t be kept suffering any longer. We went to the clinic, expecting to see an exhausted animal. He was lying down when we arrived, but then he got up. He recognised us. However, it was the effect of the medication, nothing more. It was time to make the hardest decision,” Ruslana recounts.

Due to the russian aggression, we lose animals in situations where we could supposedly save them. Our actions are limited by shelling, fuel shortages, conditions of extreme stress.

Journalist and blogger, known to readers as Yuri Koshmarchenko, wrote a lot and humorously about his pug named Agamemnon. Many people visited Yuri’s page to read about his dog. But in March 2022, Agamemnon died. Yuri couldn’t get him to the vet in time due to shelling and fuel shortages.

“I have thoughts that I could have gone to the vet earlier. Could have found fuel faster. Or a detour route (at one point, a bridge blew up right in front of our car). Or something else. It still hurts me because of this. I don’t know what to say. Just take care of your own ones. Whoever these ‘own ones’ may be,” he says.

Oksana Zinko, a psychotherapist, says that the feeling of guilt is one of the hardest experiences. It applies, of course, to the period after the death of an animal. This is a state in which people often get stuck in their grieving.

“This situation can be explained by the fact that there is a great responsibility on the person for the fate of the animal. And caretakers cannot forgive themselves for how everything turned out,” explains the psychotherapist.

Moreover, people who have lost a friend — a dog, cat or another animal — often don’t feel they are understood and supported as they wish. So how to cope with the loss of someone who became so dear to you?

The loss of a person or an animal is often not radically different.

According to Oksana Zinko, downplaying the significance of the loss of an animal and comparing it to the loss of a person are categorically unacceptable.

“Just like between a person and a person, a relationship is built between an animal and a person,” she explains. “And often animals give us something special: unconditional love and devotion. After the loss of an animal, its caretaker goes through the same stages of grieving as in the case of the death of a loved one. This includes denial, shock, guilt and depression.”

Yulia remembers that she felt the urge to return to the rituals of walks: “I even thought about posting ads saying that I would walk with any dog. And I replaced it with just walking. At first, I took a leash, put it in my backpack and walked to our, with Tymchyk, places. I sat on a bench, talked to him, remembered, cried. It lasted about a month.”

Yuri says that he even misses what used to annoy him: snoring, piles in the corners where there’s a risk of stepping into. But the most painful thing is that nobody welcomes him at home anymore: “At first, the absence of those jumps on my head hit me straight in the heart every time.”

Ruslana also speaks about this: “When you come home and no one welcomes you, you feel like it can’t be real.”

Often people don’t understand another person’s grieving for an animal. In particular, they compare this loss to the loss of material things. But Oksana Zinko explains: when we lose someone we had a close relationship with, we grieve for our own condition as well — for how we felt when our dog, cat, friend or father was alive.

How can you help yourself to cope with and accept the loss?

“The animal gave us a lot of love. And now we face a difficult task — to give some of that love to ourselves, to take care of ourselves,” notes Oksana Zinko.

She explains that there’s a classic dual model of grieving. What is its essence? We have to allow ourselves to grieve, to cry, to be angry at this injustice, regardless of other people’s thoughts or criticism.

Tymchyk’s former caretaker rightly points out: “If a person feels that this is a significant loss, they have to go through it. From the outside, it might have seemed that I was grieving too much. I remember our friends came over, and I burst into tears when I said ‘we explained to the little one that we buried Tima in the sand.’ I think it’s not necessary to pay attention to how people will perceive it from the outside.”

But at the same time, it’s important to help yourself with the desire to live.

“Explore new things, make new plans, talk to people. It’s normal if at some point you fall back into sadness and withdraw from active social life again. Your support should remain, or rather, be strengthened by your personal forms of support — the ability to rely on yourself,” explains Oksana Zinko.

It’s also helpful to find a community of people who have gone through similar experiences.

Yuri says that he has always received sincere support from others:

“I think this is one of the important traits of Ukrainians — the ability to appreciate any life. Pay attention: when we read about rescuing operations from under rubble after shelling, there is always information that so many people were rescued, as well as a cat, dog or a parrot. Every life is sacred. Ukrainians don’t even know this as much as they naturally feel it. But I felt it myself — with the sincere condolences of many people.”

Thematic groups, chats, a friend or an acquaintance who has experienced the loss of an animal as well — they will help you go through this path a bit easier, without getting stuck in a feeling of guilt. By the way, how not to get stuck in it?

Feelings of guilt often arise regardless of how and why the animal died.

“Many people feel regret and anger at themselves, even if they know deep down that they did everything possible to save the animal,” says the psychotherapist. “Of course, when a person faces a situation, they need time to accept what happened, to get over it, to grieve. However, guilt left unchecked can gradually destroy lives. We have a choice: to control these feelings and emotions or to allow them to control us.”

Ms. Oksana explains that feelings of guilt are not just emotions. Essentially, guilt is the belief that you have done something wrong and deserve to suffer for it. The only way to influence this belief is to change what we believe in. There are several options here.

Observe your feelings of guilt. Do you notice that you’re repeating the same guilty thoughts over and over again? Choose the “stop” signal to get off this painful mental path. It could be a physical action, like taking a deep breath and exhaling sharply. Then consciously focus on something else, like your plans for tomorrow. This way, you’ll remember that there is something positive ahead in your life, not just negative things from the past.

Choose the courage to accept what cannot be changed. Repenting of mistakes doesn’t change or compensate for the past. It just drives you into a dead end. The only thing you can change now is your future. Accept this fact.

Choose balance. Feelings of guilt make us focus on the times we perceive as failures — when we were “too busy” to walk, play with or hug our pet. Or when we couldn’t take them to the vet earlier, pay attention to symptoms of illness. This prevents us from objectively seeing all the other time we spent with our pet. So the next time your mind dives into these unhappy thoughts, decide to refocus. Actively remind yourself of the good times when you were a truly responsible and caring pet owner. Most likely, this was a significant part of the time.

How to help a person next to you grieving for the loss of an animal

“The worst thing that can happen is belittlement. If you don’t know how to support, it’s better to keep silent than to say that I ‘can just get another cat’,” says Ruslana.

If you want to support someone who is grieving and avoid saying the wrong things, it’s best to inquire about how they’re feeling.

“Our idea of how we can help sometimes differs significantly from what the person needs. Some people want to be alone. Someone needs to go to a place where they have spent special time with their pet, someone needs to talk. Allow them to express their needs. If we can’t help, it’s very important not to harm,” says Oksana Zinko.

The psychologist suggests a few universal words of support: “It must be very difficult”, “I can’t even imagine how hard it is to go through this.”

However, phrases like “I know how much it hurts” should be avoided. Because we can never fully feel another person’s pain. Everyone hurts differently.

The psychotherapist also advises being cautious with religious themes. Religion touches very deep values, so it can evoke strong emotions.

How to help a child comprehend the loss

“Tima died before our eyes,” recalls Yulia, “the little one was at home. He saw our reaction, but then he didn’t quite understand what was happening. He asked, and we explained to him what happened. We told him that Tima died and that Den (dad) buried him in the sand.”

Often, the death of a pet is the first death a child has encountered. And how adults help them through this can affect their future attitude toward death. The best thing you can do is to be honest with the child, says the psychotherapist.

“It’s important to explain in advance that every animal grows old and eventually dies. Tell your child the truth, but be careful. Never tell them about clouds or other fantasies. This creates distrust of parents and the world, which is very difficult to overcome later,” says Oksana Zinko. “When the pet’s death has already occurred, certain rituals can help say goodbye to the pet, cope with the loss and gradually accept it.”

When choosing a ritual, focus on what may resonate with your family. You can plant a tree in honour of the pet or write a farewell letter. Perhaps the ritual will be related to something important in the pet’s life.

“We cremated Pyrizhok and brought the urn home. Then we decided to scatter his ashes from the window. Pyrizhok adored windows, he could sit there for hours. It was a kind of feline Netflix. And we decided that such a farewell would be the most appropriate,” recalls Ruslana.

***

Soon after losing Pyrizhok, Ruslana’s family adopted a kitten from a shelter. The girl says it wasn’t she who saved him, but he saved her. Yulia isn’t ready for another dog yet, but she happily interacts with other dogs on the street, which somehow replaces the absence of Tymchyk for her.

It’s been a year without Agamemnon for Yuri, and he’s currently not ready to be responsible for another pet either.

Oksana Zinko explains that people choose different strategies: some immediately get another pet, while others close this question for themselves forever. There can be no universal answer here. Everyone has their own way of acceptance. But most importantly, it should bring peace to their souls.