It might sound silly to hold a funeral for a dog – but it helped our kids accept that he had gone
‘When’s Jimmy coming back, Mummy? When’s Jimmy coming back?”
Sonny Jim – Jimmy to his nearest and dearest – was the beloved pet dog of the Walker family. Kelly and Geoff, an early years teacher and the owner of a music agency, had bought him in 2007 from a breeder in Northumberland. A show cocker spaniel with a friendly nature, Sonny Jim was the darling of Kelly and Geoff’s friends and neighbours.
Over the following years the Walkers had two daughters, Honey, nine, and Blossom, four. Sonny Jim was just as affectionate with the girls as he was with their parents – and he showed some admirable stoicism too. “He was fantastic,” says Kelly, 43. “The girls used to dress him up. You know, quite literally, I'd come down and he'd be dressed like Elsa (from the film Frozen), with a wig on, and he didn't mind. Blossom used to paint his toenails and everything.”
Last Hallowe’en, the family donned their spooky fancy dress – Sonny Jim was dressed as a spider – and went for a walk through Guildford, Surrey, where they live. On their return home, they sat down to a takeaway. Sonny Jim, Kelly recalls, “was being his greedy self, sniffing around, wanting our plates.”
And with no warning: “He just did this horrific scream and collapsed on the floor. I knew he’d gone, and the girls were there and saw all of this. I was trying to shake him, and I was screaming, and my eldest daughter was trying to shake him, and I knew he’d gone.”
Geoff, 44, gathered Sonny Jim in a blanket and took him to a 24-hour vet. Shaken, Kelly cleaned up. It would later emerge that Sonny Jim had probably suffered an aneurysm, dying at the age of 13.
It was the first time the two girls had encountered death. Honey, then three, didn’t understand, repeatedly asking Kelly when Jimmy was coming back. Grief-stricken on her own account, Kelly had to try to explain that Sonny Jim wasn’t returning.
While researching dog cremation, Kelly found Dignity Pet Crematorium, which is in Hook, Hampshire and whose offering includes funeral ceremonies. Kelly knew that people might find it odd for the family to hold a funeral for their dog; her mother warned that it might upset the girls. But she and Geoff nevertheless booked in Sonny Jim. “I just thought: ‘We have to see him, we have to go and say goodbye, do a little service for him. Because otherwise the girls are not going to understand that he isn't coming back.’”
Pet funerals are becoming a more widespread practice. The Association of Private Pet Cemeteries and Crematoria reported a 10-15 per cent increase last year in owners requesting cremations, as opposed to disposal of the bodiers. Kevin Spurgeon, who owns Dignity Pet Crematorium, has had so much custom over the past few years that he is adding a new building to his picturesque rural premises.
As Spurgeon says, “More and more pet owners want to come and say goodbye to their pet, and not just leave them behind the scenes at the vet for disposal, or for the weekly company to collect them.”
His customers receive personalised ceremonies, sometimes overseen by an Anglican vicar. Normally, he says, a funeral “takes the form of the family coming, having private time in the room, sometimes asking us to read a little something out for them, be it a poem or some words if they don't feel able to do it themselves.
“Other times, we just give them the space to do what they want. So we've had Hari Krishnas chanting. We've had Hindu ceremonies in the garden, Muslim ceremonies and Christian and basically multifaith, but also completely humanist ceremonies where it is just remembering the pet and thanking, being thankful for the time that we've had with them.
“And then a lot of those people now place items with the pet. And if they've got children, we try and encourage kids to express themselves through drawing something, writing something, finding the pet’s favourite toy, or a favorite treat, or something else that's significant.”
That’s what the Walkers did. The crematorium presented Sonny Jim as if he were asleep, and the family sat with him. “There was a lot of tears,” says Kelly, “there was a lot of pictures drawn, there was a lot of ‘Write your favorite things about Jim,’ and the girls wrote about our holidays, the fact that he used to pinch carrots, all these little kind of funny things about his character.”
They said a prayer, they laid flowers next to Sonny Jim, and they stroked him for the last time. After he was cremated, the family was given a set of mementoes: an envelope containing a clipping of his fur; a paw print; a necklace for Blossom made with his ashes; a Christmas decoration. The cremation, she says, cost £280, and the trinkets brought the fee up to about £550.
Walker acknowledges that the funeral might appear unorthodox to people who don’t have pets or who dispose of dead pets in unceremonious fashion. “We did what we thought was right for our family by being so open. I know he's a dog and I know it might sound stupid to have a cremation and to have a little service. But it was right for our family and it was right for the girls.”
The day after the ceremony, says Kelly, Blossom stopped asking when Sonny Jim was coming back. “It was just like, ‘I miss Jimmy.’ And now she says that every day; she says it to Jeff at nighttime. ‘I miss Sonny Jim. He’s in Heaven. He’s died now, and I miss him.’”
It seems that the funeral helped the girls compute what had happened while allowing them, and their parents, a measure of closure befitting the loss of a beloved family member. Sonny Jim wouldn’t have understood it, but why should he? Funerals are not for the dead, but for the living. For the Walkers and for many others, this was the right way to say goodbye.
How to cope with the loss of a pet
This year, says Diane James of Blue Cross’ bereavement support service, “people's loss of pets is compounded really on the circumstances of the world.”
And in any year, the loss of a pet can cause an owner significant grief. “For some people it's their only companion, or it's a link to someone they've loved and lost.”
NAME invites those who have lost a pet to call the Pet Bereavement Support Service, free of charge on 08000 966 606, or contact them via their website. There is no typical way to grieve, she says, and no particular timeframe. It helps to talk about the loss and to use methods one might use to cope with the loss of a person. “The same as we would with human bereavement, write a letter, put all your thoughts on it.”
Children, says James, “are quite resilient.” Don’t tell your child that the animal has run away or has moved to a farm or has been “put to sleep”; “a child’s version of being put to sleep is different to ours.”
Instead, be honest without being gory. “Talk about it; don’t hide it.” Invite your child to remember the pet with pictures, poems, and sentimental items. “It’s about making them understand that it’s a natural part of life and nothing to be feared.”
