It's traumatic for the dog, too. Often, when someone with a dog is found dead, the dog will have bitten (or eaten) their face, in the hopes of waking up their owner.
> The dogs start biting and eating as a form of animal instinct. They notice you’re dead by your smell and lack of reaction, and they come and lick the unclothed areas to wake you up. If you’re dead and there’s no reaction, they switch and enter the next level—from licking to biting. That’s all. It is not a matter of hunger.
> The dogs start biting and eating as a form of animal instinct. They notice you’re dead by your smell and lack of reaction, and they come and lick the unclothed areas to wake you up. If you’re dead and there’s no reaction, they switch and enter the next level—from licking to biting. That’s all. It is not a matter of hunger.
Quite sad, really.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21533604