Pet cemetery

A pet cemetery is a cemetery for animals.

Pet cemetery in San Francisco, California.

Pet grave at Brookgreen Gardens, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

History

Soldiers' dog cemetery at Edinburgh Castle

Many human cultures buried animal remains. The Ancient Egyptians mummified and buried cats, which they considered deities. The largest dog cemetery in the ancient world was discovered at the Ashkelon National Park in Ashkelon, Israel.^[1] London's Hyde Park was the site of an informal pet's cemetery between 1881 and 1903, receiving 300 burials with miniature headstones.^[2] Cimetière des Chiens in Asnières-sur-Seine in Paris, dating from 1899, is an elaborate, sculpted pet cemetery believed to be one of the first public zoological necropolis in the world.^[3] America's largest and oldest pet cemetery is in Hartsdale, New York. It dates from 1896 when a vet working out of Manhattan offered to let a grieving pet owner bury her dog in his hillside apple orchard. Today it is the final resting place for more than 70,000 animals.^[4]

Burial options

Grave of Peggy Guggenheim next to a plaque remembering her dogs

Pets and other animals to which people are emotionally attached are often ceremonially buried. Most families bury deceased pets on their own properties, typically in the yard. Pet cemeteries offer single and multiple plots options. A specially designed pet casket or vault may be used. In cremation, the remains can be saved in an urn, buried, or scattered. In a memorial cremation, several pets are cremated together. The resulting cremated remains are then scattered on the cemetery grounds. In most cases pet cemeteries will have a chapel, and there will be facilities to hold either a non-denominational Christian or, alternatively, a non-religious ceremony.

In January 2010, West Lindsey District Council gave permission for a site in the village of Stainton by Langworth where animal remains can be interred alongside human remains as part of a "green burial" site, making it the first place in England where pets could be buried alongside their owners.^[5]

American art collector Peggy Guggenheim is buried alongside the grave of her dogs on the grounds of her home, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni (Now the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, an art museum on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pet cemeteries

See also

• Animal loss

References

External links

• International Association Of Pet Cemeteries & Crematories
• Interfaith Association of Animal Chaplains
• Virtual Pet cemetery
• Pet Cemeteries - slideshow by Life magazine
• Pet Cemetery Directory - for pet cemeteries across the US and Canada