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Why Do People Love Their Pets? 2 3 9 (Archer et al. n.d.) indicated that women showed stronger attachment to their pets than med did. Lago et al. (1988) developed a "pet relationship scale" that was partly based on features indicative o f attachment. Factor analysis revealed a main factor comprising items indicating affectionate companionship. Endenburg (1995) used a single mea- sure that involved people estimating their strength o f attachment to the pet and esti- mating the average attachment people had to their pets. A coefficient was calculated from the ratio o f their own attachment to the standard. Respondents showed the highest mean coefficients for dogs and cats. Most o f this sample o f more than 400 pet owners in The Netherlands said that they had acquired their pet for company and reported that its presence generated a sense o f security. Serpell (1996) also used a single-item rating scale o f attachment to pets and found that most o f his sample o f 37 dog owners and 47 cat owners said that they were very attached to their pets. A more elaborate 33-item questionnaire measure o f attachment to a pet dog was designed by Archer et al. (n.d.), on the basis o f characteristics o f human attach- ment. The composite measure showed strong attachment by many owners towards their dogs, with a considerable proportion endorsing individual items such as viewing the pet as an important part of their lives and one that provides a sense o f comfort. Studies o f reactions to the loss o f a pet can also provide evidence for the strength o f p e o p l e ' s attachment to their pet. Using the framework o f attachment the- ory (Bowlby 1969, 1973), Parkes (1986) referred to grief as "the cost o f commit- ment" to the lost loved o n e - - i n other words, an indirect measure o f the strength o f attachment. The process o f grief involves the emotional distress, thoughts, and feel- ings that accompany the slow process o f mentally letting go o f an established rela- tionship. Both anecdotal and systematic evidence indicates that there are clear paral- lels between the sort o f reactions people show to the loss o f a pet and to the loss o f a human relationship. Anecdotal evidence, from the U.S. and the U.K., includes newspaper reports (Graves 1994; Haddon 1994), psychiatrists' case histories (Keddie 1977), surveys o f veterinarians (Stewart et al. 1989), and reports by people who specifically counsel bereaved pet owners (Carmack 1985). Studies in the U.S., the U.K., and Israel o f the situations in which people say they would cry, have revealed substantial numbers o f r e s p o n d e n t s - - m a l e as well as f e m a l e - - w h o say they would cry after the death o f a pet (Lombardo et al. 1983; Williams and Morris 1996). Several specific investigations o f grief following pet loss have been under- taken. Earlier studies (Quackenbush 1984, 1985; Stewart 1983) have tended to be mostly qualitative in their descriptions, showing parallels between grief following human death and to death o f a pet. Stewart (1983) reported that a minority o f her sample (18%) were so disturbed that they were unable to carry on with their normal routine, and a third described themselves as very distressed. Dunn et al. (1992) stud- ied a sample o f nearly 1,000 bereaved pet owners in the U.S. and found that grief was brief but intense. Sadness was still apparent in over half the sample 1 month af- ter the loss, and crying and guilt in approximately a quarter. Archer and Winchester (1994) incorporated aspects o f the grief reaction known from studies o f human grief (Parkes 1986) into a 40-item questionnaire, which was