If a friend invited you to attend a pet funeral service for their dog or cat, would you go?
That’s the question in the Social Qs column of The New York Times last week. It was titled “Burial for a Basset Hound.”
I personally buried our family’s basset hound by myself decades ago. It is an experience still vividly seared into my memory.
I was home alone, and my parents were out of town. Because I had a cold, I let Lady out, rather than walk her. She wound up getting hit by a car on a busy road near our house. A neighbor called to give me the news.
My penance was burying her body. I’m sure it was totally against local ordinances in Maryland. I transported her stiff remains, wrapped in an old comforter, by wheelbarrow to the back edge of our property. Digging dirt in freezing, nasty East Coast weather was hard work.
Still, the physical effort was a release for the emotional burden. With tears, sweat, and a runny nose, I buried her and placed a large rock to mark the spot. It was a comfort to see her resting place in the backyard, and seeing any basset hound still delights me.
I did the burial by myself. I don’t think having anyone there would have helped me feel better about what had transpired.
Here was the question in Social Qs column: My otherwise-sensible neighbors sent me an invitation to a funeral for their 12-year-old basset hound. They are going to bury the dog in the backyard and say a few words in its honor. They have no children, so this event is not to humor them. I had no relationship with the dog. What would make adults hold such a foolish affair? And how do I get out of it? H. L., Westport, Conn.
Here’s what columnist Philip Galanes had to say:
As I type this, I am gazing at an 8-year-old poodle that means more to me than 97 percent of the people in my Rolodex. (And that’s being generous to the Rolodex.) But you’re right: a funeral for a dog is unusual. So why not be a mensch and go?
We develop all kinds of offbeat relationships in our increasingly cyber lives: with pets and sweaters and shops around the corner, anything that’s real, and that we can touch (aside from our central relationship with touch-screen smartphones). Their loss is something we mourn.
So what’s the harm in a teary toast to a departed basset hound, or honoring your neighbors’ affection for him? (Especially if they have the good sense to hand out chilly glasses of Sancerre along with memorial cards to Spot.)
If you simply can’t squeeze yourself into your neighbors’ shoes, feign sympathy and claim another engagement. Be sure to be away from home at the appointed hour. But don’t come crying to us when your neighbors neglect to take in your mail during your next vacation.
So, what’s your opinion? Should family, friends or acquaintances attend their friends’ or relatives’ pet funerals?
There’s a great blog post at today’s New York Times blog, The New Old Age. The post is titled “The Pet Problem.”
Anne-Marie Schiro, 76, was determined that what had happened to a friend’s pets would not happen to hers.
Ms. Schiro’s friend, who died after a long illness, had made arrangements for a caregiver to take one of her cats. She assumed her son would take the other. But after her death, the caregiver backed out and the son decided that the additional cats — he already had two — were just too much. In the end, one cat was adopted into a new home, but the other was taken to a shelter.
“I’m going to make sure that something like that doesn’t happen,” Ms. Schiro said. “A lot of people will promise to take care of somebody’s animal, and then it comes down to it and they don’t want it or it’s too much trouble or it’s not well behaved or they find some excuse.”
Ms. Schiro’s solution? A document called a pet trust. Ms. Schiro lives in Manhattan with her 104-year-old mother, Anna Schiro, and three cats. The document specifies that if the cats — Lou Lou, Mimi and Johnny — outlive Ms. Schiro and her mother, they will be taken to a retirement community at the North Shore Animal League America, where they will live out their days, paid for by money set aside for them.
Read the entire story here:
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/the-pet-problem/
Should you do a funeral or memorial service for your pet? Some kind of ceremony that recognizes the loss is a valuable undertaking, especially when children are involved. It provides a “teachable moment” regarding life and death.
However, you may want to keep it a small immediate family affair, with those who were closest to the pet. There are people who don’t hold animal death in the same regard as the end of a human life. They can brush aside your feelings with “It was just a dog” (or cat, goldfish, hamster, and so on) and do you serious emotional harm.
Many of the elements that provide comfort in a human funeral apply to a pet funeral. Here is a suggested outline for how to hold a pet funeral.
Recognize Reality: Acknowledge that the pet has died, talk about how it came into the family, lived a good life and was loved by those gathered around.
Remember: Share stories about the pet’s antics or personality traits, actions undertaken on the pet’s behalf, and treasured memories. You might gather photos, toys, and other memorabilia related to the pet.
Reaffirm Beliefs: If you believe your pet has gone to a better place, say so. If you believe you will be reunited with your pet when you leave this world, say so. If you believe the love of an animal companion is a valuable thing, say so.
Release: Close by gently saying goodbye. Cover the grave with earth and set any memorial marker or tributes in place.
A helpful e-book about grieving the loss of a pet is available at my website, AGoodGoodbye.com.
My friend Barbara has six cats and no spouse or kids. After a brush with heart problems, she prepared her will and set up a pet trust for her kitties. After she dies, her cats will be cared for and live out their days in her house, which will become property of a local animal rescue organization.
A pet trust provides a legal technique to make sure beloved animal companions are cared for after the human is gone. You basically give your pet to a trusted person – a trustee – along with enough money or other property for them to make arrangements for the proper care of your pet. The trustee then pays a monthly stipend to the named caretaker(s) for your pet. The caretaker(s) actually feed the animal, play with it, take it for walks and to the vet, etc.
“You want to make sure the caretaker is willing to take on the responsibility of caring for your cat or dog and that they are in a position to handle it,” said Steve Hartnett with the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys.
Name up to three alternate caretakers in case your first choice is unable or unwilling to serve. To avoid having your pet end up without a home, consider naming a sanctuary or no-kill shelter as your last choice.
There are two types of pet trusts: a “living” trust that is in effect while you are still alive, or a “testamentary” trust that takes effect after you die through provisions in your will. A living trust avoids a delay in property being available for the pet’s care after a death or disablement, but they often have additional start-up costs and administration fees. A testamentary trust is a less expensive option, but there may not be funds available to care for the pet between when you die and your will is probated. Also, it does not apply to a disability that may make you unable to care for your pet.
With either pet trust type, you’ll need to transfer money or other property into the trust, known as funding. Without funding, the trustee will not be able to provide your pet with care. There are many factors in deciding how much money to transfer into the pet trust, including the type of animal, its life expectancy, the standard of living you wish to provide, potentially expensive medical treatment, and the overall size of your estate.
To get a pet trust, consult with an attorney who specializes in estate planning, and if possible, also has experience with pet trusts. While you’re at it, do some estate planning for your human family as well!
You may also be interested in this Dear Abby column on older pet adoptions and providing for their care.
There’s a very nice article in today’s USA Today about pet hospice. It focuses on a no-kill shelter in Denver called MaxFund which sends old, sick dogs and cats to foster homes, where people love and care for these animals in their last days. From the article:
Only a tiny fraction of the nation’s shelters have such programs. The meds and care such animals need to stay content and pain-free cost plenty. And there are millions of healthy animals requiring shelters’ attention. Moreover, hospice fostering isn’t the kind of work every volunteer feels able to take on. It’s tough enough to foster a litter of puppies, becoming attached, knowing they’ll be gone soon. But hospice fosters know there will be no happy-ending adoption to mark the end of their time with an animal.
And there’s the truth that helps such people through the sad moments: That old dog or cat was not scared or alone. Whatever else had happened in its life up until then, including abandonment by an owner without the compassion or soul or guts to be there until the end, is erased or at least overwritten by period of love and a peaceful parting.
To read the whole article, click here.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram ran a major feature about new trends in pet end-of-life care on Monday, November 30.
It focused on Beyond the Rainbow, believed to be the first business of its kind in Texas. Beyond the Rainbow offers complete end-of-life care for pets, including in-home hospice, funerals, cremation and burial. The company is owned by licensed funeral directors Kate Moore and Terry Branson, who have a combined 60 years in the human funeral industry. They’ve brought together veterinarians, chaplains and counselors to help families deal with pet loss.
Pet hospice — palliative care designed to keep pets pain-free and comfortable in their homes until they die — is becoming a trend.
Humans, take note!
Click here to read the full Star-Telegram story.
Many service providers have developed to address a need for memorializing deceased pets. You can find more products and services to honor your deceased pet than you thought possible by searching online for “pet memorials.”
There are memorial stones and markers for pet graves, garden statuary, urns of ceramic, stone, wood, cloisonne, metal, and other materials for display. You can get beautiful biodegradable urns of paper, fabric, hemp, or wood for burial in earth or water. You can get paw or nose imprints of your pet, and turn them into plaques or jewelry. Turn bits of your pet’s cremated remains into gemstones, or obtain clips of fur or feathers. Special picture frames can enshrine your pet’s memory. You can even make bookmarks with your pet’s image.
However you choose to pay tribute your pet, remember that it’s not what you buy, but the feeling that you hold in your heart that truly matters.
“If you want to highly insult a dog owner, don’t ever say ‘It was just a dog’,” said dog lover Yvonne Blevins. “For most true pet owners, it is very devastating when they lose them.”
Yvonne and her husband Roger have the cremated remains of four deceased pets in their own memorial rose garden in the back yard of their home. The couple, who have no children and consider their dogs as family, have sandstone monuments etched with the name of each pet, their nickname, years of life, and a picture. The Blevins did their own personal memorial services for their dogs, different for the personality of each animal. If they ever move, they will take the cremains, which are in boxes wrapped in plastic, and the headstones to their new home.
Pet owners can process their grief in many different ways, starting with disposal of the body. What you do with your pet’s remains can vary widely, depending on where you live, how you feel about the remains, how other members of your family feel about “what to do with Fido,” your budget, and other factors. Here are some options to consider:
1. Let the vet handle it. If an animal companion dies while at the vet’s or is euthanized in the vet’s office, they will offer to dispose of the body. In the midst of grief, this is an easy way to deal with your pet’s remains. This service may or may not have an associated cost. You may not have a say in how the body is disposed of, and you may miss a sense of closure.
2. Get the remains cremated. Options for cremated remains abound. You can keep Fluffy in a special container and create an altar to her memory with her photo and cat toys. This is a viable avenue if you rent or live in an apartment or condo. You can scatter the ashes in your yard or a special spot where your pet liked to play. You can bury ashes in your back yard and place a memorial marker.
Pet cremation costs vary based on the size of the animal, and how the cremation is handled. Best Friends Pet Services in Albuquerque offers two individual cremation options, one where the pet is by itself during the cremation, the other where it is separated from other pets in the retort, using ceramic dividers. The remains are returned in a ceramic urn. With a third option, communal cremation, a group of pets is cremated and the remains are not returned, but scattered on private land in the mountains.
3. Bury the body in your yard. This gets a little trickier — cities and municipalities have a wide range of zoning ordinances regarding burial of animal and human remains. You can check with your local land planning and zoning office to find out the rules for your area. In rural areas where folks own lots of land, this isn’t as much of a concern. Either way, remember to dig deep enough so the remains are not disturbed or become a health hazard. Check with all family members first to see if they are okay with having a “body” in the yard. All it costs is your own muscle, sweat, and tears. You can pay for a memorial stone if you wish.
4. Bury the body in a pet cemetery. While a formal cemetery burial for a pet can be an expensive option, they can be some of the sweetest resting places for a beloved animal. You get a sense of the love that others lavished on their deceased pets, and it’s comforting to be among other pet lovers when you visit your pet’s grave. Prices for services and perpetual care can vary widely. Braemarr Pet Cemetery in Santa Fe accepts all kinds of animals, including horses. They provide biodegradable coffins, a marker, grave opening and closing, a short service if the owner wishes, and maintain the high desert landscaped grounds. Prices can range from $345 to $670, depending on the weight of the pet. You can find an online listing of pet cemeteries and crematoria at the web site for the Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement.
5. Check with your local humane society. If you don’t have a place to bury a pet or the funds for disposal fees, your local humane society may be able to receive and dispose of animal remains for little or no charge.
Santa Fe grief counselor Janice Barsky decided there was a need for a pet loss support group when a woman who had been hospitalized from traumatic grief over the death of her dog showed up at a hospice grief support group meeting she was facilitating. The group was outraged at the woman’s attendance, along the lines of “How dare you sit there and talk about the loss of your pooch, when I lost my husband of 50 years,” said Barsky. The woman never returned.
When people don’t get support from society for their loss, they experience what’s called disenfranchised grief. Those who are uncomfortable talking about death, don’t know what to say, or are truly careless, may dismiss another’s loss, saying it was just a dog or it was only a cat. Yet the pain is very real, sometimes debilitating, and requires time to heal.
“Nothing is quite so devastating as losing a pet,” said Jon Marr, owner of Braemarr’s Loving Care Pet Cemetery and Crematory in Santa Fe. “They love us so utterly, unconditionally and without judgment under every and all circumstances, it’s small wonder our pets often become our closest companions as we travel this road of life.”
“There’s just something special about a person who’s willing to emotionally invest in a creature, let them so deep into their heart and form that strong bond, knowing, at some level, in all likelihood they’re going to outlive them,” said Barsky.
With that deep love comes deep loss when the animal dies, and pet owners find different ways to cope.
Marilyn Saltzman, general manager of Best Friends Pet Services in Albuquerque, which provides cremation, memorialization, and tributes for pets, sees different emotional reactions for the loss of human versus animal family members. When a pet dies, it is a highly emotional time, and gradually the grief diminishes. With a human death, often the family is in shock as they make funeral arrangements, then grief intensifies as the days go by.
“The key to remember is grief is normal and you’ll move through it. It feels sometimes like you won’t, but you will,” said Ann Beyke, an Albuquerque counselor who specializes in pet loss grief. Common emotions, besides profound sadness, include anger, guilt, and depression.
Beyond losing the love of the animal, the pet represents cycles of life. Duffy Swan, president of French Mortuary, which owns Best Friends Pet Services, spoke of a kitten that was a present to his daughter for her fourth birthday. The cat moved with the family to several cities and was always there as the daughter grew up and then got married. He thought the son-in-law would take the cat with his daughter, but no, the cat, which lived to the age of 19, stayed with Swan and his wife.
When the cat was ailing, Swan held it as it was euthanized. “I wasn’t that close to the cat, but after I left the vet’s, I had this sense of being blue,” Swan said. “I later realized that cat was the last living link to my four-year old daughter, and it was the end of an era.”
Counselors Barsky and Beyke agree that talking about the loss with sympathetic people helps to heal the grief.
“I can always tell when a person is getting better in any kind of kind of grief, because they start wanting to help others,” said Barsky. “That they even notice someone else’s distress is a sign of great progress.”
Observed Beyke, “Just knowing that others have felt the same thing, are grieving the same way, having the same questions and getting the support of others is essential during a time like this.”
Here are some tips they offer on grieving the loss of a pet:
Allow yourself to mourn. Tears are natural. Don’t apologize for feeling the way you do.
Do what feels right for you. Don’t be afraid to insist on what you need from the vet before a pet is euthanized, such as holding and talking to the animal.
Change your routine. If you have always taken a walk with your dog at 6:00 a.m., schedule a different activity at that time.
Seek supportive people. Avoid those who don’t understand or say hurtful things.
Take care of yourself. Grief goes to a physical level quickly. Avoid making yourself sick.
Push the envelope toward healing. If it’s too painful to look at photos of a deceased pet, put it off, but go back again later. It will get easier.
Don’t beat yourself up or replay guilt tapes. “If only…” thoughts drain your emotional energy and interfere with the healing process.
Wait six months before getting another animal. It’s not a set rule, but if you get a replacement pet right away, you might not bond well with the new one.
Get professional help if you need it. Online resources include the Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement (www.aplb.org) with online chats five days a week or memorial sites such as Rainbow Bridge (www.rainbowbridge.org), a site for pet owners to memorialize their deceased animal companions.
It’s rare that headline news strikes our families directly, but the big news in 2007 about tainted pet food from China hit my family hard.
My brother Glen had to put down his 12-year old Great Dane, Abby, because her kidneys were failing and she couldn’t hold her bladder. He had switched three months earlier from feeding her Alpo to Iams Canned Chicken & Chunks, one of the recalled foods, thinking at the time it would be better for her digestion. It may be that both brands were tainted.
He cried for three days before she was euthanized. The vet took care of disposing the body. “I don’t think you get as much closure when you put them down and you don’t have the body to dispose of,” Glen said.
I know about feeling guilty over the death of a dog. Many years ago, I let our family’s Basset Hound, Lady, out one cold winter day. I didn’t walk her because I was sick in bed. A neighbor called to say Lady was hit by a car on a busy road around the corner from our house.
My penance was burying her body. I’m sure it was totally against local ordinances in Maryland. I transported her stiff remains, wrapped in an old comforter, by wheelbarrow to the back edge of our property. Digging dirt in freezing nasty East Coast weather was hard work.
Still, the physical effort was a release for the emotional burden. With tears, sweat, and a runny nose, I buried her and placed a large rock to mark the spot. It was a comfort to see her resting place in the back yard, and seeing any Basset Hound still delights me.
Glen got another dog within a year of Abby’s death. He got a tri-colored Basset Hound with a big personality named Charlie. He’s a totally different pet, yet Glen is very much a “dog person” and wanted another one in his life. I have yet to meet Charlie, but look forward to the day I do.
For my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, my brothers and I gave them a small parrot – actually a white eyed conure. We thought Condo was a fun gift. That bird lived almost 30 years, during which my mother changed the paper in its cage, saved the seeds from peppers and cantaloupe as bird treats, and swept up the mess it constantly made. It laughed the same way the family did, chuckling along whenever something funny was said. We never did find out if it was male or female, but it usually tried to bite men and cooed at women.
My parents buried Condo in a sock shroud, in the front yard of their Florida home, right next to a Bird of Paradise plant – an appropriate spot for a bird that has gone to its final roost.
A week after the bird died, I asked my parents how they were doing. Dad missed saving the papers to line the cage, and Mom thought of Condo every time she cut up a pepper. They both missed the cheery “Hello” the bird called every time they walked in the house.
Our beloved pets’ spirits live on in our hearts forever.
