Thursday, September 1, 1033
Daily Ncbraskan
Pegs 7
Owners 9 last uman touch9
gives pets a final home
A major convention took place in
the Midwest this summer. It didnt
receive much publicity.
"We had 80 owners of pet cemeteries
from around the nation in at
tendance," said Pat Blosser, founder of
the International Association of Pet
Cemeteries. This was our sixth annual
summer seminar, and we think it was a
big success."
Blosser, 52, is owner of Paw Print
Gardens, a pet cemetery in West
Chicago, I1L Although pet cemeteries
(0 Bob
x) Greene
are not talked about much Blosser
said that people who use them are
sometimes wrongly considered to be
"kocks" there are more than 450 of
them in the United States.
"Before pet cemeteries came along,
the situation for animals who died was
very bad, Blosser said. "The people
would leave their dead pet with the
veterinarian, and would not really
think what happened after that But in
most cases, the pet's body would
simply be taken to the local rendering
plant, or to the garbage dump. Then
Jones would inquire at some later date
about what had happened to her dog
or her cat and the vet would have no
good answer to give.
All that has changed, according to
Blosser. "We have a 24-hour phone
service, and a pickup service," she said.
"This is very important, because when
a person calls, that cat may be lying
dead in the front room, and to ask the
person to wait 12 hours is just the
wrong thing to do."
Blosser said that often a person's
grief for a dead pet is more intense
than for a human relative. "We have
had funeral directors visit our
cemetery, and often they will remark
that they have seldom seen such grisij"
she said.
The reason, she said, is that pets are
often more devoted than humans. "Un
like a human, no matter what you do
to a pet, that pet's devotion will not
waver " she said. "The faithfulness is
always there. If you keep putting food
in a dog's belly, and give him a pat on
the head, he's content. Humans will do
things to cut up and divide the family.
Youll always hear that 'so-and-so isn't
talking to so-and-so,' or 'so-and-so and
so-and-so are getting a divorce.' You
dont hear that about a human and his
or her pet
Blosser said that, at her cemetery,
more than 4,000 pets are buried. Most
of them are dogs and cats, but the
graveyard also has 12 horses, a
Shetland pony, a spider monkey, a
duck, a guinea pig, 2 lovebirds and a
parakeet
"We have counseling sessions every
Thursday night for the humans," she
said. "They need to work through their
grief. We advise them, for example, not
to try to replace their pet right away
we advise a waiting period of at least
six weeks."
Blosser said that it is not just single
people or childless people who come to
pet cemeteries: "There's no way to
define who comes. You cant say if it
will be the young, or the eld, or the
middle-aged, or the single, or the mar
ried. But I will tell you this when you
see a man crying his heart out for his
pet, you can tell it's the first time in his
life he has cried with such deep feeling.
"I really dont think it's going too far
to say we help keep some people out of
mental institutions. They hurt so badly
over the loss of their pets, but they feel
they can't express that hurt to
neighbors or co-workers. If the pet
cemeteries werent available, I think
the combination of grief and self
blame and denial would put some of
these people in the hospital That's
how bad the hurt is."
There is one generalization Blosser
feels she can make about the people
who use pet cemeteries:
They're different from the rest of
the world. They're more caring, and
more honest and more feeling. If the
whole world was made up of the
people who come to pet cemeteries, I
dont think we'd have any need for
ges or juries or policemen.
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