Pet Headstone

A Surprising Number Of Pet Memorial Options Are Available Today

A pet headstone is an important part of the ever-growing choices for people wanting to memorialize their beloved animals. Pet headstones are among the most fluid of headstones. The possibilities for them are almost limitless.

Perhaps a few things to take into consideration when you purchase pet headstones are the following.

Which pet headstones best fit my fallen furry friend? Is there a pet headstone that is more fitting to the memory of a cat, or for that matter a dog? Should the size of the animal be a consideration when considering which pet headstones to purchase? Or should your pet headstones be more reflective of the size of their hearts towards you, big, big big!

Most pet headstones will wind up in the backyard of the surviving humans, although there are pet cemeteries around the world. (Stephen King in fact, made them famous with his 1983 thriller novel “Pet Cemetery.”) Still others decide to choose a majestic scene, perhaps a rolling hill that does not get much traffic as the place for their pet headstones. Perhaps you know of a place out in the country, part of the great expanse of land in America, where you can lay your dog, cat, or other animal to rest.

Some decide on pet headstones that look a lot like human headstones, perhaps with an etched in picture of a dog, cat, or other animal resembling their own, along with the animal’s name, date of birth, and date of death. Along those lines, some choose pet headstones with footprints, just like their dog Scruff’s, or their cat Baxter’s.

Others go for a pet headstone with a photo of their animal emblazoned on top. Think about some of the things your dog or cat would have liked. Did your dog like his bone? It may be possible to talk to a headstone dealer about engraving a picture of a bone into the headstone, perhaps as part of the background. Did your cat like his water bowl? Perhaps a “water bowl” can be bronzed into the headstone. At the very least though, you should be able to find a picture of your dog, cat, or other animal doing the things they loved, so that you will be able to remember the good times with them. It may even provide a laugh or two during your difficult time of mourning.

There are also those who opt for a pet headstone with built in urns. This makes them look remarkably like human headstones, so much so that one wonders if the owners are subconsciously denying the notion that their animal friend was anything less than human. The other advantage of these pet headstones is that you need never worry about any future pets digging up the buried one and thinking he or she is a toy. They were not toys, they were good friends, and they deserve better than to be chewed up and gnawed upon by their successors. Even pet urns are not without a degree of variety, as there are both jewelry urns that can be worn by humans, and garden urns, which will fit perfectly among the plants and trees in your backyard. Some may see jewelry urns of pets as a bit too morbid for an animal that was not even human, but others would ask the question, what is it to be human anyway, and where is the hard and fast line that supposedly determines that?

It may be in some ways more difficult to decide on pet headstones than human headstones, given the communication barrier that can occur between humans and animals, but if we stretch our minds, it may not be that different. In order to make things easier, consider that pet headstones are your last chance to tell your cat, dog, or other animal that you loved them very much. How will you express that? How will you express the undeniable truth that you even miss what you once thought of as his or her most annoying characteristics, such as jumping on tables, teething, chewing up your newspapers and magazines, and not staying in the tub when it was bath time? Hopefully you told your pet many times that you loved him or her, in life. Now that that life has come to an end, is it not worth saying one more time? Try not to be too somber when you do think of that though. Your animal spent his or her whole life trying to make you happy. If you do not take happiness in the life your animal led, what was it all worth?

In the afterlife for your pets, they will most likely look down on any headstone you decide for them and feel loved and appreciated-although they might feel slightly tempted to mark their territory first.