Nobody warns you that keeping small animals means doing this repeatedly. A household that took on two guinea pigs when the children were six can find itself arranging small pet cremations Shevington families would recognise three or four times before those children reach secondary school. Each loss is real and each one lands on a family who has done it before and somehow expected it to be easier. Heavenly Pastures is a family run business providing pet cremations for households across the Wigan borough.
Short Lives, Repeated Goodbyes
The arithmetic is unforgiving. A hamster gets two or three years. A rat, two to three. Mice less. Guinea pigs and rabbits do better but rarely reach the span of a cat or dog. Any household that keeps small animals continuously is therefore signing up to a rolling sequence of deaths rather than one distant event, and often with several animals in the house at overlapping stages of old age. Families frequently tell us they had not thought it through in those terms when they started, and there is no reason they would have.
The Second and Third Time Are Not Easier
People expect practice to help and are unsettled when it does not. Sometimes a later loss lands harder than the first, because it arrives on top of the others and because it reminds you of them. Children in particular can be entirely composed about one death and then fall apart over the next, which parents read as an overreaction when it is usually the accumulation surfacing. None of that means anybody is handling it badly.
Hutches, Winter and Village Gardens
Shevington households tend to have proper gardens, and a great many small animals here live outdoors year round in hutches and runs rather than in a bedroom. That changes things at the end. Outdoor animals decline faster in a cold snap and are frequently found in the morning by whoever goes out to feed them, which in a lot of families is a child. It is worth thinking in advance about who does that job through the winter, because being the one who opens the hutch is a specific and avoidable thing to land on somebody.
What to Do When You Find Them
Bring them somewhere cool and undisturbed and leave the rest until you are ready. There is nothing that needs doing straight away. We answer weekdays from half eight to four, and an out of hours arrangement exists at an added charge. Small animals decline quickly and often quietly, so many families find themselves in this position with no warning at all, which is ordinary rather than a sign that something was missed.
Where Everything Takes Place
Heavenly Pastures has no branch, unit or crematorium in Shevington, and none anywhere in the borough. There is one crematorium and it sits at Burscough, near Ormskirk. Collection from the house is the usual route, though carrying a small animal in yourselves is something a great many families would rather do. Our Shevington pet cremations page covers the local arrangements.
The Same Two Choices Every Time
An individual cremation service keeps your animal apart from any other, with the ashes brought back and handed to you. A communal cremation service means cremation alongside others with no ashes coming back to anybody. Households that go through this repeatedly often choose differently on different occasions, and there is nothing inconsistent about that. The animal who was clearly one child’s, or who lived longest, sometimes warrants something the others did not.
Every Small Animal You Keep
Our small pets individual cremation service covers rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, rats, mice, ferrets and chinchillas, and the same seriousness applies to each. Where animals lived as a bonded pair and one has gone, mention the survivor when you ring. Rabbits and guinea pigs in particular do badly left alone, and that is worth raising with your vet quickly rather than waiting to see.
How We Keep Track of Them
Families who have used us more than once still ask about this, and rightly. The identification each animal carries from collection to the return of ashes is described on our our standards page.
What It Costs
Charges follow the service selected and the size of the animal, plus a collection band based on the run out from Burscough, which for Shevington is short. Small animals sit at the lower end. Prices are held on the pet cremation price list where they stay current.
Telling Children, Again
Parents who have already explained one death find the second and third conversations oddly harder rather than easier, partly because children remember exactly what was said last time and will hold you to it. Consistency matters more than eloquence here. If you told them the last hamster was cremated and the ashes came home, a child will reasonably expect the same for this one, and quietly choosing differently on cost grounds is the sort of thing that gets noticed and remembered. It is worth deciding what your household’s usual approach is going to be, so that each loss is not renegotiated from scratch while everyone is upset.
Whether We Come Out to You
Shevington and the villages around it are all on the round. The areas we cover page lists everywhere else if you are checking on behalf of family elsewhere.
Talking to Us
Ring 01704 776976 and mention if you have been through this with us before, because it makes the call shorter. If you would rather write, the contact form reaches the same team and will be answered.