Pet Funerals Become More Common

From the first day our pet came home, he was part of our family like one of us. If we have caught him since he was a puppy, he will spend an average of ten to twenty years with us depending on the breed of dog. As one of the family, many people find it too cold to end their relationship at the vet’s office, leaving his dead body there. That’s why funerals for pets were born.

How were funerals for pets born?

As early as the 19th century, the Maharajahs of India, who were the rulers in the country before gaining independence from England, began to enact this custom of funerals for pets.

Maharaja’s pets were basically dogs, and some had an inordinate love for them. So much so that there were Maharajas who came to have the chilling figure of 800 dogs.

These were cared for even better than the people who lived together in the palace, which denoted the great love that the Maharaja had for them. That love motivated him not to allow any of his animals to be just buried in a hole in the garden. When a dog died, it was buried as if it were a son of the Maharaja himself.

As if it were a prince

Their funerals were state funerals, just like that of a prince, with a coffin, funeral march, religious speech (in this case Muslim), mourners and a formal burial.

But once India gained independence and the Maharajah came out of power, these pet funerals ceased and no one continued the custom. However, they say that money became the engine of the world pushing out love, so in their desperation to create new businesses to profit from, human beings thought about how to take advantage of people’s needs.

We don’t know who was the first to market funerals for pets, but we’re sure the idea came from the need for people who had pets to say goodbye to their faithful friend as one of the family.

How do pet funerals work?

Like all funerals, a pet funeral follows the same procedures. There are funeral homes that specialize in pet funerals. There you can choose if you want to bury or incinerate your pet. There are different services that funeral homes can offer. For example, these that we point out below:

• Individual cremation without ashes. Your animal will be cremated individually but its ashes will not be returned to you.
• Individual cremation with ashes. This procedure will be a little more expensive than the previous one, but you can “take” your pet home.

• Joint cremation. This will be the cheapest, although you will not be able to have the remains of your friend since he will be cremated along with others.
• Burial. This will be in a cemetery, with a coffin that you have chosen in advance and where a tombstone (usually marble) will be given to your pet for a minimum of five years.

Whichever plan you choose, they all include:

• Collection of the dead animal in the veterinary clinic, the street or the home.
• Trunk and reminder diploma.
• Farewell talk.

What else do funeral homes offer for pets?

As we told you, you can choose to incinerate your pet and take the ashes home with you. In the funeral home they have a wide catalog of urns for pets with different designs and shapes that you can choose depending on the type of pet you have. There are in the shape of a cat or a dog, with the shapes of prints of one or the other. There are round ones like a ball or imitating a ball of wool.

Even if you always want to carry your pet in your heart, you can choose a mini urn that you can wear as a pendant with a small part of your pet’s ashes.

If you decide to bury your pet, you will be given a choice from a wide variety of caskets in different shapes and colors and for all sizes.

As you can see, everything is inventing, or are we missing something? Be that as it may, funerals for pets are the order of the day, having become a fad that many follow and that others want to follow.

And in case you are still not sufficiently surprised, we tell you that there are funeral homes for pets that give you the option of hiring their services in advance by making a small monthly payment.