Personalized Pet Memorials

Personalized pet memorials are seen as an important way for pet lovers to remember their pets long after they have passed on. With well of 60 percent of American households being pet owners, the pet memorial industry is growing at an incredible rate. In 2007, in was a $37-billion-dollar-a-year industry. When the need arises for you to select a memorial for your beloved pet, know that you are not alone. There are many options available for you to to have a remembrance of your pet for the rest of your life.

Colleen Mihelich, Founder of Peternity

The loss of a pet is very difficult. Making plans ahead of time can ease the process and make it easier to deal with when that time comes. Yet many do not know where to start.

Recently, LoveToKnow was able to speak with Colleen Mihelich, founder and creative director of Peternity pet memorials. See her advice on choosing the right personalized pet memorial as well as planning advice for a funeral for your beloved pet.

How does someone choose the right memorial for their pet?

It is a VERY personal thing. Questions to help to guide someone through this sometimes difficult decision are:

• Do I believe in cremation, burial or neither?
• Do I want something for indoors or outdoors?
• Do I want something traditional like a pet grave marker or urn? Or something more unique and less obvious, like memorial jewelry, a painting, or an embroidered blanket?

Is this a decision that I want to make together with my other family members?

What options are available?

Our products include pet grave markers, pet urns, custom pet portraits and drawings (some incorporate the ashes in the oils and acrylics), pet keepsake boxes, pet memorial jewelry, blankets, and engraved glass pieces. Kidoodlyrocks are pet grave markers onto which we engrave childrens' drawings of their pets. The process of creating the stone is very helpful to parents in guiding their children through grieving and healing.

Other options include planting a tree or bush in one's yard or on a piece of family property. Some people opt to do an online pet memorial. We offer online memorials for free. A memorial is a very personal thing and doesn't have to cost a lot of money. You can also make a scrapbook of your photos or create your own keepsake box out of box you may already have and decorate it with your children.

Honor your pet beautifully.

How does a personalized pet memorial help with the grieving process?

In my experience, most people see the creation of their pet's memorial as their last chance to formally pay tribute to their dear friend and express their gratitude for the love and friendship that they shared. There is usually a sense of wanting to get it "just right", and for it to be perfect. We strive to help people fulfill this wish for perfection. We recently had a woman find the perfect memorial on our website - she had been searching for it for five years!

The decisions that go into choosing just the right memorial and then getting all of the details right are an important part of the grieving process. Each of these decisions are made out of the love, respect and adoration that we have for our pets, and each decision, whether large or small help us to move forward through the pain and heartache.

I think the most poignant moment for many people is when the piece finally arrives at their home and they get to open it for the first time and see it. We hear from so many people about this moment, and the emotion with which this moment is anticipated.

Is it appropriate to give a gift to someone who has lost a pet?

Absolutely. The grieving person needs to know that others understand and want to support them in some way. It can be difficult sometimes though to choose the words to have engraved onto a memorial marker or urn because it's so personal.

There are many different options to express your sympathy to a grieving friend, depending on how close you are. Sometimes just a card is appropriate; often times a grave marker is perfect. We do a lot of grave markers as gifts.

How can friends and family be supportive?

Listen. Be there. Sometimes that's hard because we want to "say the right thing" and get stuck in clichés, but just be there in the way that your loved one needs you to be, and listen if they need to talk about it. There are no right answers and pet loss is just as painful as losing humans. I hear time after time after time how people feel more pain over the loss of their pets than over human family members.

Kidoodlyrocks help children grieve.

What tips can you give to help pet owners with the loss of their pet?

The best tip that I try to give, as much as people don't want to hear it, is to try to plan for the loss of your pet before it happens. Just like in losing anyone else that we love, we don't want to think about it, but it is so much easier to make the difficult decisions involved when we're not wracked with grief. We are able to think more clearly when our hearts aren't broken.

Secondly, use the Internet as a resource. There are many great pet loss support sites on the Internet as well as many retailers with great pet memorial products at all different price points.

Also, check in your area for pet funeral parlors and pet cemeteries. There are more of them around than you might think. But if you would like to do something smaller or more private, you can create whatever type of memorial service you would like right in your own home or backyard. The formality of a ceremony is very helpful for children.

What else would you like to share?

Just to know that there is no right or wrong way to grieve and no right or wrong amount of time to grieve. Whatever you're feeling is okay and it's totally normal to be completely devastated over the loss of an animal companion. Reach out for help; there is a lot there and you can find most connections to resources right on the Internet. There are a lot of physical pet loss groups that you can join all over the country.

Peternity is a website community for grieving pet owners. They offer support for adult and children as well as personalized pet memorials and products. Visit Peternity for more information on honoring your lost pet.

LoveToKnow would like to thank Colleen Mihelich for taking the time for this interview.

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