At the end of the day man it's people sympathizing with someone they don't know yes, but that's what people do, it gives a person great power in their own belief to feel like they said a nice piece to a person going through a hard time, maybe I just feel different because I went through this exact same situation last year, I'm 22 and I got my dog when I was 11 so most of the time I was actually growing up and understanding more about life he was a part of my daily life, unlike a lot of my grandparents who went in their mid 80's while I was still under 10 it just hits hard differently and as the years go on all thoughts of death hit harder, I lost my old neighbor a few weeks back to cancer, he battled and won 3 times before and rarely did I go hangout with that man but being in that church with his widowed wife and his 14 and 10 year old kids looking at their father dead in a coffin is enough to bring tears to anyone's eyes, like a lot in life the argument boils back to a "in the eyes of the beholder" state sorry for the drawn out explanation nobody cares about, I just catch the feels on some topics sometimes