Birchwood Pet Cremations – How Long Everything Takes

One of the questions families most want answered, and least like asking, is how long any of this is going to take. Heavenly Pastures arranges pet cremations for households across Birchwood. Since people reasonably assume otherwise, our location is worth putting plainly. There is no branch of ours in Birchwood and no crematorium in the town. A single site handles everything, at Burscough near Ormskirk, and we travel over to you.

A Town That Was Planned

Birchwood was laid out deliberately in the seventies rather than growing outward from an old centre, and it shows in ways that matter on a difficult day. Wide access roads, parking that actually exists, paths kept clear of traffic and a great deal of green space threaded through the housing. For collection it is about as straightforward as anywhere we go, and there is rarely any need for anybody to come out and direct us to a door.

Green Space Built In

Dogs here have it better than in most towns. The forest park and the mossland reserve sit within walking distance of ordinary streets, and the separated paths mean a dog could be walked for an hour without going near a road. Households frequently tell us afterwards that it is those routes rather than the house that become unbearable, because a designed landscape does not alter from one year to the next. The benches and the turnings are all precisely where they stood a month ago, and the single alteration is the absence walking beside you.

From the Call to Collection

Usually the same day or the next, and often within a few hours if that is what you want. There is no queue you are joining and no standard slot you are allocated. Equally there is no hurry imposed from our end, and families who want a day or two before anything happens simply say so. Nothing deteriorates in the meantime provided your pet is somewhere cool and undisturbed. Families sometimes want a night with the animal still in the house before anybody comes, and that is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for rather than something you have to justify.

The Cremation Itself

Within a few days of collection in most cases. This is the part nobody wants a running commentary on, and we would not offer one unless you asked. If you do want to know when it will happen, or want to be told once it has, say so on the telephone and that is arranged without any awkwardness. Roughly half of families would rather know and roughly half would rather not, and neither preference strikes anybody here as strange.

Ashes Coming Home

Where you have chosen the individual route, generally within a fortnight rather than the several months some people brace themselves for. A person brings them to your door rather than a courier delivering them, which we think matters after a decade in somebody’s house. If there is a reason you need them sooner, a date somebody is travelling home for or something planned while the weather holds, say so and it can usually be worked around. Nobody will mind being asked.

Which of the Two Services

All of that assumes ashes are coming back, which rests on one decision. An individual cremation service keeps your animal separate from any other throughout, and that is why ashes can be handed over at the end. A communal cremation service puts several through at once, and no family sees anything come back. Both are carried out with identical care by the same few people. Only one leaves you anything, and there is no going back on it, so it is worth being certain. If the choice is genuinely balanced for you, it helps to know that taking the individual route leaves everything still open later on, whereas the alternative shuts it permanently.

What You Will Pay

You will find the whole of it laid out on the pet cremation price list, so that the subject of cost never has to be brought up by somebody who can barely form a sentence. Weight determines the cremation charge. Travelling out is billed separately by journey time from Burscough, laid out on the areas we cover page. Driving over to us yourself takes that element away entirely, and Birchwood sits close enough to the motorway for it to be an easy run.

Evenings and Weekends

Our ordinary hours sit within the working week, and beyond them a separate arrangement applies with an additional charge. If a pet has died late and the morning would serve, morning is cheaper and nothing is lost by waiting. Cool, quiet and undisturbed is all that is needed until then, and nobody should be sitting up through the night feeling that something ought to be happening.

Smaller Animals

Plenty of households here keep rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, birds or reptiles, and the timescales above apply to them in exactly the same way. People telephoning about something that fits in two hands often expect to hear that it scarcely justifies a proper arrangement. Nobody has ever heard that from us. What can be done for the very smallest companions, ashes among it, is covered on the small pets individual cremation service page.

Ringing Us

Call 01704 776976 and a member of the family answers. Ask about timings, ask about anything else, or ring having settled nothing at all. Nobody presses and nobody telephones you back afterwards. Where writing suits better than talking, the contact form arrives with the same small team.