A furry farewell: Wacky world of luxury pet funerals - goldfish-sized coffins, dog’s ashes scattered by drone & very special requests
WHEN a pet dies it feels like losing a family member – for many, they want to bid farewell to their beloved friend with a bit of a ceremony, whether it’s a tarantula or a goldfish.
Some people choose to ship their pet off to the vet for an industrial cremation, no ceremony, no service.
But for others, it’s a far more extravagant affair.
In Hampshire, dog owners Dharminder, 43, and his wife Ramanpreet, 40, held a £2,500 send-off at a specialist pet crematorium for their dog Simba.
The couple’s a six-year-old Akita died of cancer five years ago after the couple had already splashed out £13,000 on treatment.
Simba was placed in her dog bed in the back of a hearse, then led from home by a funeral director and on to the Dignity crematorium.
She had flowers spelling out her name displayed outside the family home before travelling past the family’s place of worship.
Explaining why the pooch was given such an elaborate send-off, Dad-of-three Dharminder, who runs an events business, said: “Simba was part of the family, and we treated her like we would any human.
“She was our first dog and she was wonderful, affectionate and just so well behaved. We couldn’t have asked for a better dog.”
The trend of throwing a lavish funeral for pets is on the rise with fresh pet cemeteries cropping up in Cambridge and Stoke-On-Trent in recent years.
A pair who know all about how to give your pet a lavish send-off are pet cremation firm directors Chris Castle, 33, and Wojtek Kodakowski, 47.
They run a bespoke pet funeral firm just on the edge of London, and in the few years they have been running, they have seen everything the wacky world of bespoke pet funerals has to offer.
They offer a range of services that pet owners are looking for and form a small part of the £110 million UK pet funeral services market.
Across the planet pet funeral service providers offer up burial and cremation services, memorial products and even grief counselling.
Chris and Wojtek offer a full, customer-led service to bereaved pet owners with no pet too small for them to care for in death.
They are eager for people to know that when a pet passes away, you can do more to remember it than just flushing it down the loo or burying it in the garden.
Chris and Wojtek started up Cherished Hearts Cremations after Chris’s father suffered a terrible experience when he lost his labrador.
Chris and Wojtek’s first job in the business? A goldfish brought to them by its owner on a train.
The duo charged £55 to cremate the little fellow and sent it home with its grieving owner in a tiny urn.
Chris explained what started him off in the pet funeral services business, saying: “When my dad’s labrador passed away, most of the vets we found have these huge contracts with these really big, large industrial incinerating firms.
“The dog had to go off to one [incinerator] in the north somewhere near Cambridge.
“It takes about two weeks, and we were just a little bit uncomfortable with the dog being in a freezer in the vets for a week until Friday, then being picked up and, you know, how do we know it’s our dog?
“So we came to a decision that we could probably do it quicker and have a more personalized service where people can come and attend. So that’s, that’s how we first got into it.”
Business grew relatively quickly for the two after they started up, and now they’ve done everything from full-blown Hindu burial ceremonies to aerial ash scattering.
Just a few of the strange animals the duo have cremated include tarantulas, chickens, goldfish and pigeons, with all sorts of pets leaving a hole in their owners’ lives that they hope to fill with a touching and personalised farewell service.
They pair offer a range of memorial items, the more expensive of which can cost up to £1,000.
Bereaved owners can opt to have a full model of their pet made for a substantial fee.
Chris explained: “The paw print impression is almost universally requested with every cremation; that’s very common.
“Uncommon would be the actual handcrafted figurines, so people can make a figurine of your actual pet out of resin, and then you’re talking literally about a grand probably for people to make an actual figurine replica of your dog.
“We have an artist who can do that.”
The biggest and most lavish events are hosted by the Asian community, Chris explains, and he and Wojtek try to accommodate every request.
Chris said: “Sometimes the whole family comes together.
“It’s a more dignified service of which people just, you know, they need to know that the vets aren’t the final option, which can be very expensive.”
He continued: “But when it comes to spending big money, we’ve had a lot of large, large, family gatherings, mainly with the Asian community, especially a lot of Hindu burials.
“We’ve had probably up to 20 to 30 family members here where they all come, we’ve had Hindu priests come at the same time.
“They do the ceremony with their dog and the incense and the prayers and the whole family comes and then they all help put their animal into the machine itself, followed by them coming back and getting the ashes, and they release it into flowing water.”
On top of a personalised ceremony, families can ask for any extra services they want and Chris and Wojtek will try to deliver.
“We try to be competitive on price,” Wojtek said, adding that bespoke caskets and urns can run anywhere from £100 – £200; some can even be custom engraved.
More lavish or bizarre ceremonies obviously cost more but Wojtek explained that they are “always transparent on price.”
For a fee of £500, a drone can fly your beloved pet to the beach and spread its ashes there, or anywhere else for that matter – provided it’s not in a no-fly zone.
The most expensive cremation service they have ever done came in at a staggering £900.
For that particular funeral, Chris said, the family wanted “a bespoke casket in the shape of their dog. They wanted the family members to attend.
“They wanted the Hindu priests, a lot of paw print impressions and incense.”
Of course these are all services offered up by Cherished Hearts Cremations, who have various deals with local artists.
The firm can create and sell paw print impressions, jewellery made from the ashes of a cremated pet, bespoke handcrafted caskets and urns, portraits of passed away animals and even polished stones made up of compressed pet remains.
The service itself was no less lavish, with Chris saying, “So the rundown of that was they turned up, we have a little room, a room of remembrance, and they had their dog in there.
“They brought the dog out, they had a table, they had the priests come down, they had the music, the prayers, they put incense sticks all around our cremation site.
“They all carried the dog, they placed it into the machine, and more prayers.
“Then they turned the machine on themselves.”
Each of the little trinkets and extra services adds a bit to the price tag of a burial or cremation but for families who have lost a cherished and loved animal it’s worth it.
Chris and Wojtek say, in fact, that paw print impressions are the most common request they get; almost all of their customers ask for one.
The directors of Cherished Hearts Cremations want pet owners to know that they can say goodbye however they see fit.
Whether grieving families want an elaborate funeral with all the bells and whistles to say goodbye to their beloved pooch or a simple, understated cremation for their goldfish.
Anything is possible when it comes to pet burials, your furry friends don’t have to be shipped off to a vet somewhere and unceremoniously incinerated.
Both Chris and Wojtek eagerly explained that: “Most vets will rip you off, and there are other services out there.
“You don’t have to remortgage your home to get your pet cremated.”
(Article source: The Sun)