Coming home to it is its own particular cruelty. You put the key in the door expecting an ordinary evening, and the house is wrong before you have taken your coat off. Heavenly Pastures arranges pet cremations for families across Crosby, Waterloo and the coastal streets, and this is one of the more common ways a loss actually happens. On the practical point, we have no premises in Crosby. There is one crematorium, at Burscough near Ormskirk, and everything is done from there.
You Were Not Meant to Be There
The first thing worth saying is the thing nobody says out loud. Animals do not wait for us, and there is a reasonable body of opinion that some prefer to be alone at the end. Whether that is true of your animal is unknowable. What is certainly true is that being at work is not neglect.
What to Do in the First Half Hour
Nothing has to happen quickly. Sit down if you need to. When you are able, move your pet somewhere cool and quiet if they are not already, and leave them undisturbed. If there is another animal in the house, let them come and see if they want to, because it tends to reduce the searching afterwards. Then ring somebody, whether that is us, a friend, or the person you live with, because the first half hour alone with it is the worst part and it does not need doing alone.
If You Are Not Sure They Have Died
Occasionally people find an animal who is very still and cannot tell. If there is any doubt at all, ring a vet immediately rather than assuming, particularly with cats and small animals, who can be profoundly unresponsive and not yet gone. No practice will think you foolish for checking, and it is a call worth making even at an odd hour. Cold extremities and stiffness are more reliable indicators than stillness alone, but if you are standing there uncertain, that is exactly what an out-of-hours line is for and nobody will be irritated by the question.
The Guilt About Not Being There
This is the thing that keeps people awake, and it deserves addressing directly rather than being smoothed over. Families torment themselves with the idea that their animal was frightened, or waiting, or wondering where they were. The honest position is that nobody knows what an animal experiences at the end. What we can say is that an animal who spent years in a house with someone who fed them and let them sleep on the furniture had a good life, and the last twenty minutes of it does not cancel the previous twelve years. Nobody sitting in a house that has gone quiet has ever been persuaded of this by being told it, and it remains true regardless.
When the House Is Empty All Day
Anyone who works full time with an elderly or unwell animal carries a low hum of this dread. There are practical things that help. A neighbour or a walker looking in at midday, a note by the phone with your vet’s number so anybody in the house knows what to do, and a conversation with the people you live with about what should happen if they find the animal first. It sounds morbid and it saves a great deal of panic. Households where nobody has ever discussed it tend to spend the first hour arguing about what to do while everyone is at their worst, which helps no one and is entirely avoidable. If your pet is elderly rather than ill, our page on planned euthanasia covers what a decision made in advance can look like.
The Choice to Be Made
When you feel able, there is a decision. An individual cremation service keeps your animal on their own throughout, so what is returned to you is theirs. A communal cremation service means several animals together and nothing is given back afterwards. What each of them costs appears on the pet cremation price list rather than being quoted case by case. There is no need to settle it the same evening, and if you ring us simply to ask what happens next without deciding anything, that is a perfectly ordinary call.
Telling the Rest of the Household
If you found the animal and others are still out, you have the additional job of telling them. With children, plain words work better than gentle ones, and it is usually better done as soon as they are home than saved for a moment that never quite arrives. The Remembrance section of this website gives a family somewhere to put a photograph together afterwards, which some people find helps more than they expected.
Getting to Crosby
We collect from houses across Crosby and the surrounding roads, and from your vet where your pet was taken there. Timing is arranged around you, including in the evening if you got home late and would rather not wait until morning. What collection costs follows travel time out from Burscough, with the bands published on the areas we cover page. Driving over yourself is equally fine if you would rather not wait in.
Ringing Us
01704 776976 reaches a small family team rather than a call centre, at whatever hour you find yourself needing it. If you would rather not speak this evening, the contact form will do and we will come back to you gently.