Though many in our world may not always seem to agree, memorializing your dog is a perfectly healthy and reasonable thing to do. The fact is, a dog, over the years, becomes as important to a person as a member of a family, and losing the faithful companionship of a beloved friend like that can be emotionally traumatic—especially for children, but even adults become attached to their pet dogs in most cases too. We have assembled this article to help you understand some of the many reasons that memorializing a dog is a good thing to do. We also hope to give you some ideas for memorializing your dog as well as some ideas for where to go for help.
Reasons for Memorializing Your Dog
Experts in psychology and other related fields unanimously agree that, if you desire to memorialize your dog—or if anyone in your family has such a desire—then it is important to stage a memorial of some sort. Ignoring those feelings, as many are tempted to do in our modern world, can have emotionally devastating effects. It is especially important not to ignore—or, worse, belittle—the feelings of grief that may appear in children in your family when a dog dies. This can only add to the emotional trauma of the death. (We also note that experts uniformly agree that it is very important to be honest with children about a death. Sometimes the temptation is to, perhaps, tell a white lie to a child—to make up a story that, say, the dog simply ran away. From an emotional development perspective, this is always a mistake. It will only lead to distrust, which will cause future emotional turmoil—even in the most careful of cases. You should operate on the notion that the lie will always be exposed eventually—because, in real life, it almost always is.)
Acknowledging the death of a dog that has been an important part of your family’s life is a great way to justify all of the love that you devoted to a faithful friend who was loyal and dedicated to you and provided many hours (even years) of support to you in his own special way. It also a great way to make sure that you and your family go through the grieving process in a way that will assure that emotional healing will take place properly.
The important thing to remember about memorializing your dog is that the idea may seem awkward when you first decide to do it, but, as you go through the process, you will certainly understand the emotional benefits of doing it.
Ideas for Memorializing Your Dog
Ideas for memorializing your dog need not be elaborate nor expensive nor time-consuming. (Though they can be, if you and your family so desire. The important thing to remember is that there really is no correct or incorrect way to memorialize a dog or any pet, for that matter. Because most people will likely be reluctant to spend a great deal of time and money on this project, the suggestions that follow are all of the simple variety).
Purchasing a relatively simple plaque with the dog’s name, dates of birth and death, and a few brief words about the importance of the dog’s life can be a very effective way to memorialize a dog. Once the plaque arrives from the company that made it—most trophy shops can handle such a project, but there are also online alternatives that specialize in pet memorials and can usually provide less expensive service. In fact, our next suggestion for memorializing a dog is to simply explore one of the sites that offer pet memorials. These websites offer an amazing variety of products that can be purchased without a lot of expense or fuss, and the ideas they offer will be almost endless. For creative outdoor ideas, you can also check out Pet Memorials For Gardens: 14 Ideas.
The important thing to keep in mind about memorializing your dog is that there is no perfect way to do it. You don’t have to, for example, begin your memorializing—as the temptation often is—within a few days of the death. Many families, in fact, will wait a year or more before memorializing their dog on a special anniversary—such as a birthday or some other memorable occasion. It is true that a great deal of pet memorial products are available to assist with a memorial service that a family plans more or less immediately after a death—caskets, cremation urns, and headstones are readily available, made precisely to celebrate a dog’s life. But if you or your family decide that it is more prudent and helpful to wait much longer to memorialize your dog, that, we assure you, is a healthy and reasonable choice, so long as you acknowledge that the grief you will surely experience in the meantime is a healthy and reasonable reaction to the death of your beloved friend.
Where to Get Help for Memorializing Your Dog
Help for memorializing your dog can be found, as we say, online through the many sites that offer pet memorial products. These sites are often staffed by friendly, compassionate people who will be glad to assist you directly via a voice conversation on the telephone. In fact, one good way to decide which of the companies to work with on your dog memorial is by simply calling a company during its regular business hours. If you are comfortable with the representative you talk to—and if you can speak to him or her easily on follow-up calls—then that is a sign that this is the company that will help you best.
The other source of help for memorializing your dog is your veterinarian. Many—if not most in these days—are trained, specifically in how to work with clients who are grieving over their lost pet. So these men and women will likely have plenty of great help to offer. Keep in mind, however, that veterinarians receive much more training, of course, in the science of saving pets’ lives, so dealing with grief is not necessarily their specialty. It will likely be important to combine any support they may offer with that of others, such as professional counselors and very supportive friends. And that last sentence leads us to our final bit of advice for this article: friends and other family members are very important sources of help for anyone desiring to memorialize a dog. Simply talking to them honestly about your desires can lead to a world of support that you may not have been anticipating was available. You should never be afraid to initiate such a conversation if it is on your mind to do so.
