The hidden heartbreak of losing a pet in Singapore and Malaysia

Growing up in a Malay family in Singapore, Hafeez Hassan feared dogs. He never expected to mourn one like a sibling. “Maybe that is what I have been grieving all along … The experience of loving something that I was taught I was not supposed to love,” he said. Even as an adult, walking his former partner’s husky Pieces in public made Hafeez anxious that a relative might see him, or that he might be judged for being close to an animal whose saliva and waste are regarded as ritually impure by many...