Pet memorials are a bit of a mystery to many people who own cats, dogs, and other animals that they love – from horses to parakeets to hamsters to goldfish to ferrets. They are so much of a mystery to some people, in fact, that many do not even realize that there are, indeed, plenty of options for memorializing a beloved pet upon its death. In fact, the options are more varied than possibly even the wildest imagination can see. Just as with memorials for human, the industry that makes and sells pet memorials can be confusing once one begins to learn about it. And ignorance can result in a lot of regret and possibly even wasted or overspent money. So we have assembled this brief guide for anyone who may have need of a pet memorial, now or in the future.
There is Help Available
The first and most important thing to realize is that there is plenty of help available for anyone who desires to memorialize a pet. In large cities pet funeral homes and pet cemeteries are typically plentiful, and even cities that one might consider “medium” sized are known to have at least one establishment that specializes in planning pet memorials. These companies devote their entire operations to families who desire to remember their beloved pets in a very special way. They can help organize elaborate funerals and burials and they can also help families that need just a simple way to remember and celebrate their lives with a pet. In a nutshell, the sky is the limit when it comes to what these companies can do.
These establishments can generally be found via a web search for pet cemeteries or pet funeral homes, but, if you need help finding them in your local area, almost any veterinarian’s office can be of assistance with that. In fact, in areas where a pet cemetery or a pet funeral home is not active, the local veterinary clinics often provide these sorts of service for their clients who have lost pets. Granted, a veterinarian’s services may not be as elaborate as those of the other, more specialized, outfits, but they can typically offer some good advice – base on what they have seen from other clients – about what to do when a pet dies.
And, of course, there is plenty of free advice on the internet for people who want to stage their own pet memorials. An entire industry of companies, in fact, offers pet cremation urns, pet grave markers, pet caskets and more to people who want to stage their own pet memorials without the help of any professional group. (And even if you do hire a professional to help with your plans, these online retailers of pet memorial products can often supply the goods that the professionals can order to help the events they arrange be a great success.
Pet Memorials Can Cost a Little – or a Lot
Just as with human memorials, emotional spending can be a risk for pet funerals and pet burials. The truth is, one does not have to spend a single dime to memorialize a beloved animal in a healthy and loving manner. It is perfectly legal (in cases in which you own the property) to bury a deceased pet in your own back yard using something as simple as a box, or even a sheet, towel or plastic bag, as a “casket.” Some families who live in the country side where controlled burns are legal have even been known to conduct their own cremation processes. There are even an instructional video or two on the internet these days that demonstrate how to do this. (Basically, you simply place the pet’s body into a metal container that will sustain heat while also conducting it. Then you hoist the container to the top of a burn pile and start the burn. After the fire has naturally burned its course, and the container has cooled, open it and remove the ashes that remain.)
While there is certainly no shame in spending little or nothing on a memorial service and burial for a pet, it is also possible to spend a virtually unlimited amount of money for a professionally arranged service and burial. The organizations we mentioned in the above section are well prepared to accommodate such requests – and, on a bit of a negative note, they will eagerly serve even those who cannot afford their services, so families should be very carefully aware of their own financial limitations before agreeing to hire these companies. Do not expect the owners of a pet funeral home to dissuade you from ordering their services to the fullest extent. Financial planners and psychologists alike will remind you that it is almost always a mistake to put the funeral home’s charges on a credit card account. No precious memory is worth adding years of stress to one’s life – in the form of a monthly credit card bill.
Why Pet Memorials Are Helpful
Pet memorials can be helpful for a family’s mental health in a huge variety of ways. First, the open acknowledgment of grief can be a blessed experience for all involved. Many people who experience the death of a beloved pet are shamed by a society that to often tends toward heartlessness into “just moving on.” The solution to one’s mourning in such cases often becomes, simply, to find another pet, swallowing one’s grief, and getting on, albiet uneasily, with life as quickly as possible. In these cases, even, a quick, cruel, disposal of a pets body may even be practiced – such as the body being tossed into the regular household trash, or even just left in a field for vultures and other predators of death to devour in an undignified manner.
No, experts say it’s best to simply grieve – openly, and honestly.
So staging a memorial service with a dignified disposal of the remains is as healthy an act as one can perform at the loss of a beloved, faithful friend. Especially when children are involved, experts say. Children should be encouraged to share any thoughts of sadness that may come to their minds at the thought of the death of their pet. Adults can do this best by simply sharing their own sad thoughts. And a memorial service is an ideal place to do this. Family counselors warn, however, that sharing of grief should not be limited, necessarily, to a memorial service. But rather, a funeral and burial ceremony for a pet can be the start of a parent’s communication to a child that it is, indeed, okay to mourn the loss of a pet. Parents should expect the overall somber mood that accompanies a pet memorial to return periodically in the weeks, months, and even years to come – especially on special anniversaries that once included the beloved pet.
So, in other words, a pet memorial is an important part of the grieving process, but it should not be mistaken as the entirety of the process. Rather, it can serve as a very affective catalyst for healthy grieving. The stages of grief, as defined by psychological experts, are the following: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It is often the case that novices in the field of grief (namely those who are experiencing it) expect that a funeral service – whether it be for a pet or a human – will guide one through all five of those stages over the course of an afternoon. But that is simply not how grief works. Everyone experiences the stages separately, but one thing is almost universally agreed upon by all who have studied this topic of psychology: a memorial service helps to kick off a very helpful period of grief.
Pet Memorials are an Evolving Business
The types of businesses we mentioned above (pet funeral homes and pet cemeteries) have been around for decades, but they have evolved quickly over the last few years. And the internet has made them even bigger and more capable of service many people. As a result, those who have lost a pet will, perhaps, be very surprised at the range of commercial possibilities for staging a great memorial. Cremation urns of all types, styles and even costs are available quite readily via websites that exclusively sell pet memorial products. And even funeral homes and cemeteries that arrange burial and memorial services for humans have been known to branch out somewhat into the realm of pet burials.
It is tempting to end this article with a brief summary of all the products and services that are available to those who have lost a pet and are interested in staging a pet memorial service and burial, so we will indulge that here with this caution: this is but a partial list, and you can expect it to have many new surprising additions in the future: caskets, cremation urns, cremation jewelry, headstones, and keepsakes that include a portion of the pet’s beloved cremation remains.