NY Times Article about Pet Loss

It's Now Public: Pet Owners Do Cry

By JULIE V. IOVINEN

Stahlstown, Pa., Carol Boerio-Croft coped with losing Murphy, her Irish wolfhound, by making a documentary film. The dog died of a spinal tumor in April 2000, and the film, called "Murphy's Last Chance," about how Ms. Boerio-Croft spent $85,000 and eight months fighting nature's course, has been shown regularly on the cable channel Animal Planet ever since.

In 1995, three years after his beagle's death, Ed Williams, a computer analyst in Roseland, N.J., gave up his job to manage the Web site petloss.com. Its weekly 20- minute Monday Pet Loss Candle Ceremony, conducted in 13 languages with background music from "A Star Is Born," attracts more than 1,200 people.On NBC's "Today" show on Friday, Peter Gethers, a writer, fought back tears while promoting "The Cat Who'll Live Forever" (Broadway Books), his new memoir detailing the last days of Norton, his best-selling cat. Norton's passing in May 1999 has already been recorded in People magazine (and in the Public Lives column in The New York Times).

Not so long ago, grieving for a pet was a hush-hush affair. The death itself happened on the road, in a veterinarian's office or out behind the barn with the aid of a firearm. At best, a cardboard box in the backyard � the rendering plant more likely � was the standard vehicle for body disposal. Anyone who did differently, or seemed unduly distraught, was dismissed as a lonely fanatic.

Today, pet bereavement is serious business. There are support groups and grief counselors dedicated to the subject, not to mention heart-twanging memoirs, self-help videos and commemorative Web sites. You have your custom-built coffins, your urns, your limited-edition prints � even mausoleums built for two, to house the cremated remains of pet and pet owner forever after. The British novelist Evelyn Waugh may have thought he was treading on safe ground when he trounced the pet cemetery business in "The Loved One," his savagely funny 1948 satire dishing, among other oddities, pet "eternalization" at the Happier Hunting Grounds. But he was only ahead of a trend.

The pet mortuary industry is experiencing enormous growth. In 1972, there were 96 pet cemeteries; today there are about 700, according to the International Association of Pet Cemeteries in Ellenburg, N.Y. "Attitudes have dramatically changed toward pet burial and cremation," said Ed Martin, a director of the 105-year- old Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Westchester County, the country's oldest dedicated cemetery for animals. "People were once much more guarded about the fact they were doing something with their pet. Basically, the vet said, `We'll take care of it,' and put the body out with the garbage."

Mr. Martin, who has worked at Hartsdale for 27 years, estimated that since 1991 there has been a tenfold increase in the number of people willing to do "more than they have to," as he put it, when a pet dies. Hartsdale conducts about 10,000 burials and individual cremations (as opposed to communal ones) each year, ranging in cost from about $400 to $1,200, a sum that buys an ornate satin- or velvet-lined oak coffin and a monument.

Today is National Pet Memorial Day, the occasion for pet cemeteries across the country to honor departed furry and feathered loved ones in ceremonies running the gamut from the sympathetic to the macabre. In West Chicago at the Paw Print Gardens cemetery � owned by Pat Blosser, executive director of the pet cemeteries association � the day will include a demonstration by a bomb- and drug-sniffing dog squad, a big hit last year. Contraband, usually marijuana, is planted on someone by a member of the local police department, and the dogs are let loose to find it. "It usually goes into some lady's purse and she screams in surprise," said Ms. Blosser, who founded Pet Memorial Day in 1972. "It makes for a lovely day."

At Hartsdale, there will be a "Blessing of the Animals" service, open to the public, with an interfaith minister. About 300 animal devotees are expected.

The reasons for the apparently bottomless well of pet devotion are economic and historical, as well as psychological. Animal indulgences from diamond-studded collars to therapeutic pet massage have been made possible by a decade of prosperity, especially among the upper classes, a traditionally animal-adoring crowd. At the same time, the agrarian past, with its more pragmatic attitudes toward livestock, is receding from memory. Today, Old Yeller would probably be whisked by a pet chauffeur to a specialist, not shot in a shed for being rabid.Another important factor is the well-documented breakup of the traditional family, which has left many people living alone and looking for love. Pets provide the intimate satisfaction of needs easily met, constant companionship and a physical presence that gratifies on an almost primal level. Or so say many distressed pet owners trying to understand why they are overwhelmed when Snuggles passes away. Their plight has spawned an elaborate support system. "It's a lot nicer to be met at the door by a wagging tail than an empty home or a husband who isn't talking or children who are screaming," said Meryl Koopersmith, a psychotherapist (for humans) in Manhattan, who says she isn't at all surprised by the increasing number of clients mourning for lost pets. "People who don't have other intense love objects can become intensely attached," she said.

Patricia Benton, a certified social worker and director of bereavement services at the Hospice of Orange and Sullivan in Newburgh, N.Y., has noticed more calls from the pet-bereaved. She talks to them as she would any bereaved client, but not without reservations. "I think because of our wealth, our material surplus, we can treat these animals as if they were our children," Ms. Benton said, "but some people are just so fixated on that animal that they run into trouble, because it's not an accurate perception of the animal."

She says she sometimes gets strange looks from her colleagues at the hospice. "I'll get off the phone and someone will say in disbelief, `You're talking like that about a cat?' " she said, "But the grief is so real and so deep, you have to acknowledge it."

Dedicated in life, devastated by death, humans seem to go through the same stages of grief over losing a pet that they might in losing a human, but with a slight twist: the sadness is intensified by guilt when euthanasia is involved, and there might also be embarrassment at not being able to get over it quickly. Increasingly, for the articulate at least, grief might even lead to a book deal.

Online booksellers like dogwise .com and Amazon.com list dozens of books on the subject. There's the self-published "bereavement set" by Mary and Herb Montgomery, "Goodbye My Friend" (1991), in its 15th printing, and "A Final Act of Caring" (1993), in its sixth. There's also the elegiac memoir "Home Waters: Fishing With an Old Friend" (Chronicle) by Joseph Monninger, recounting the author's last fishing trip with his 11-year-old retriever, Nellie, after her cancer had been diagnosed.

Peter Gethers and his gray cat, Norton, were already a publishing phenomenon. The annals of the inseparable duo are recorded in two books published by Crown, "The Cat Who Went to Paris" (1991) and "A Cat Abroad" (1993), best sellers both, with more than a total of 150,000 sold. Then Norton, 13, became ill; three years later he died in Mr. Gethers's arms."

Writing a third book about my cat was the last thing on my mind," Mr. Gethers said on Tuesday as he prepared for an eight-city book tour on behalf of "The Cat Who'll Live Forever." But thousands of e-mail messages and letters changed his mind.

Petloss.com started in 1992 as an online bulletin board to pay tribute to pets and share solace and advice. Ed Williams joined shortly after his beagle died of cancer; he started keeping track of the tributes and helping organize the Monday Pet Loss Candle Ceremony, now a regular rite.

There were 16 names and tributes when he started in 1993. Now there are more than 49,000. Under the letter S alone there are 78 cats and dogs named Sadie. There's also a tribute addressed to Socrates that reads, "You filled my heart with so much love, and now there is an iguana- shaped hole in my heart."

Mr. Williams, whose Web site has attracted more than a quarter-million visitors this year, said, "I never intended to do it as a full-time thing, but it takes a lot of time to spell- check the tributes and make sure the grammar is just right." Mr. Williams also sells customized tribute prints, in which photographs of people's pets adorn copies of "Rainbow Bridge," a poem about reunion after death that has become a rallying cry for the bereaved. The prints cost $9.95 to $19.95. "It's kind of inspiring to see how much people care," Mr. Williams said. "They come to the message board all messed up, thinking they're the only ones in the world who feel this way, and then they're helped by all these other people."

Kevin Zdanowicz of Woodbury, N.J., an artist and dog lover, got in too deep after his whippet died. As therapy, he found himself building and selling cat and dog coffins adorned with hand-painted porcelain portraits. After about a year, he quit because he couldn't keep up with demand. "Not that I didn't love the four-legged kids; but it emotionally broke my heart," Mr. Zdanowicz said. "I wasn't just making the boxes, I was doing pet counseling, helping with the memorial. I had to come up from it." Since then, he has become involved in rescuing greyhounds no longer fit for track racing, animals that would otherwise be destroyed.

Pet death may soon lose some of its sting; cloning is on the horizon. PerPETuate, a Sturbridge, Mass., cloning company, is hard at work. Its founder, Ron Gillespie, estimated that a cat will be cloned in less than a year, and a dog within three years. Tissue samples have already been harvested from 100 dogs, cats and a few horses, at $690 each. "

There's no doubt that the world is divided into people who love pets and the people who think those people are crazy," Mr. Gillespie said. He added that he often takes tissue samples from pets on their last legs, or already dead. But he prefers dealing with clients who are "not so emotional."

"I feel guilty taking advantage at their moment of weakness," he said.

Perhaps being emotional about pets, dead or alive, has become the point.