One of the earliest sapiens behaviors that is considered “religious” in nature is burying the dead.
Also burying is mostly to prevent the spreading of disease.
Here is an un usual story concerning pet remains.... When I was about 10 years old living in an apartment in the Bronx, I was outside on the stoop when my friend came downstairs carrying his dead dog. He told me his dog died and his mother had called the city to come for his dog. Just then a big garbage truck pulled up. A sanitation worker said..."Where's the dead dog"
When he saw the dog he grabbed it out of my friend's hands and carried it by holding it by it's tail. He opened the door on the side of the truck and swung the dog by it's tail up into the bed of the truck and then just drove away. My friend was just devastated.
That worker was an unfeeling bastard.
@freeofgod so was the effing mother.
F@#k!!
@Mofferatu quite!
I don't think you can blame the mother. The Bronx is a concrete jungle ...there isn't any place to bury a pet. Calling the city was a solution....unfortunately a garbage truck was not what she expected. @FrayedBear
@nicknotes still insensitive. She could have at least put it in a shopping bag or wrapped it in old newspaper.
My pets have been cremated. The last one was Abner, our little poodle who made it to 18 years. I still have his ashes. Richard and I chose cremation and have everything all paid for. Richard past last June 22nd and I have his ashes here at home with me. When my time comes, I will also be cremated. I've asked my kids to please take my ashes to California where I grew up and spread them at Mt. Tamalpais where I used to love to go and visit.
I once looked after an old Scotsman with gangrene. When he had been cremated his daughter took his ashes to be similarly s. pread from a mountain. The Scottish village locals sent her up the wrong mountain!
As John Prine said -
Give my stomach to Milwaukee
If they run out of beer
Put my socks in a cedar box
Just get ‘em out of here
Venus Di Milo can have arms
(Look out I got your nose)
Sell my heart to the junk man
And give my love to Rose
Love John Prine. His second best song next to Illegal Smile.
I have a Pet Cemetery since 1989. Rainbow (mutt) and Benny (German Shephard) both poisoned in 1989 (killer never found), Einstein (red Doberman) in 2000 when a piece of bone lodged in his intestines, Doogie (poodle named for Doogie Houser) died of old age (adopted him from my great grandfather after he passed and only had him a couple of years), Scruffy in 2004 (terrier mutt) died of kidney failure/old age (he was significantly north of 15, but we unofficially adopted him when his owner, our neighbor, died around 1990), Charlie in 2010 (yellow lab, a crazy one a la "Marley and Me" ) died of old age after 14 years, and Barney in 2018 (yellow chihuahua terrier mix) died in the car on the way to the vet ER with enlarged heart and liver (the regular vet could do nothing). We also buried my aunt's cat there. I think its name was Tiffer, but I could be mistaken.
I wouldn't mind being buried with them. I don't think that's going to happen.
Also we have a lab mix named Ruby who is 13-14-15 years old, and I truly did not think she would make it through last winter, but she did and she's still getting around pretty well (I'm spending a fortune on glucosamine/chondroitin and poultry cartilage supplements, but they seemed to have worked far beyond my expectations). Anyway, I made it known if she passed over the winter, I would have her cremated. I was not digging a grave in frozen, rocky ground (and she's fairly large).
@greyeyed123 Our last rottweiler was buried in a strip pit. He was 136 lbs of lean muscle. The ground was frozen to hard to dig. Our daughter worked at the mine and had an operator dig a hole. All the others were buried in our pet cemetery.
@freeofgod We just got a rottweiler mix exactly a year ago. I waited a little over a month after Barney died, and got dad a new dog. Alicia was 4 then, 5 now, and got in a few fights with our Ruby, but not since January now, so I think they're finally getting along. I'm hoping Ruby lasts another year, but we always hope for another year no matter what.
@greyeyed123 , We had Rottweilers for over twenty years. They are wonderful dogs. Our granddaughter used Traitor as a pull up when she was a baby. When he got tired of them he would go to our room where his bed was.
@freeofgod Alicia has been wonderful, except for the occasional dog fight, but even that has stopped. She went through every room in the house the first day, and in the first week she wandered off our property in a few places, but quickly returned. Now she knows where all our property lines are, which fences not to cross, and she very rarely does. Once in a while she sneaks silently to our neighbor to the south, but I suspect they may have dog food or cat food outside that she sneaks (it's been a few months since she's even done that). She is definitely the most MUSCULAR dog we've ever had, lol. (She does seem to have some sight problems, though.) The first day we brought her home, mom fell next to her chair (she has Parkinson's). Mom was fine, but Alicia sat right next to her, followed her to the bathroom, and then traced her way back to mom's chair and sniffed all around it to make sure everything was in order. It's taken her a year to feel completely at home and secure, but now she finally does.
@greyeyed123 We fenced with electric. Cheap and pretty easy. They learn the flagging very fast. Never had one stray. Did have a tax accessory come up and ask why there we BEWARE of DOGS signs all up the driveway. After he was put back in the car by them. smh
In my family, we always buried our pets in the backyard but never commemorated the location with a marker of any sort — just a simple means of disposal.
After I die, I'd like my body disposed of in a dumpster fire — but, laws being what they are, regular cremation will have to suffice, with my ashes placed in a mayonnaise jar (and then tossed into a dumpster).
You must have effective crematoriums or else big mayo jars over there!
@FrayedBear , the amount and weight of human ashes is shocking isn't it.
@FrayedBear, one of those big Hellmann's jars…
@freeofgod Apart from final excreting of wastes it is the same as when alive.
@FrayedBear ashes smart ass
@freeofgod ashes is ashes. Dead bodies are cadavers. Dumb ass.
Pets - cremated
Me - donated to science. I hope to one day be the skeleton in a high school biology lab
Vanity!
Pets cremated. I move a lot.
Me? Pick me clean of use-able parts, cremate the rest, so I don't take up space. Chuck me off of something high and windy so my atoms spread as far as possible.
We just throw dead pets in the valley.
We buryin' each-others in the ground inside chests, classic, I will love that one for Me.
Our monks are mostly, as I know, buryin' each-others simple in special nice cloth, without chest, called natural burial. If I was a monk or something much greater than this I would love this burial.
Cremation for both!
My problem is it takes fossil fuels to accomplish!
I would prefer compost types of burial!
It seems cost and location is the biggest obstacle for me and others!
For the first one you find a place to put remains in the ground. Only silly people would have markers and headstones. As for the second one I have decided to be cremated. My relatives can have a day of remembering me in pictures and words for the closure they need. Either my kids keep my ashes or they will know where to scatter me.
The trash works for me for pets. I always thought that pet cemeteries were a bit too sentimental. However, I did discover one in the grounds of Port Merian. If you are unaware of the place? It was the location for the cult 60s TV show "The Prisoner". Somehow a beautiful setting to bury a much-loved animal seemed to fit in that context.
As for me, I don't care
Bury the fur ones, Set the fin ones to water.
And I also want the pod or medical science.
Anything but an open casket and all that horror.