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eb_bartels OP t1_iunvcwh wrote

Reply to comment by nanny2359 in I spent ten years researching and writing a book about all the different things people do when their pets die. AMA! by eb_bartels

Yes! I currently have and have had several pets myself that are not cats and dogs, so this topic was of special interest to me and I tried hard to cover as big of a range of types of pets as I could in the book. I found all kinds of pets buried in pet cemeteries -- birds, reptiles, small rodents, chickens, raccoons, squirrels, etc. People also had portraits made of non-dogs-and-cats, and tattoos and even have had skeletons and parts of their pets preserved as well. In short, anything people do to memorialize cats and dogs I found people have also done with other types of animals!

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nanny2359 t1_iunxwzy wrote

I personally love a foot and tail print I got for one of my beardies - it preserves the details of the scales so beautifully.

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eb_bartels OP t1_iunz3j3 wrote

I love that idea! That sounds beautiful. I'm personally thinking about one day preserving the shell of my red-foot tortoise, Terrence, though joke's on me he is probably going to outlive me.

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ecuintras t1_iupphns wrote

My grandmother commissioned a painting of her favorite horse when he died. It's been passed down the family for about 50 years now. I'm the youngest one in the family to have a connection to that horse, so I guess the painting gets buried with me :)

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eb_bartels OP t1_iur5i9b wrote

I love this! So sweet that the portrait is passed down, but I know what you mean about things losing their meaning when the last person who personally knew that pet dies. I interviewed some people who said they really struggled knowing what to do with urns full of pet ashes that belonged to their parents, grandparents, etc.

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ecuintras t1_iusf304 wrote

Somehow both my spouse and I became our respective family's reliquary keepers, and we both are the end of our bloodlines. To ensure our pets are never lost, whoever dies first gets to take the pets ashes with them!

For the painting I'll see if the family who bought the ranch wants to hang it in one of the barns, or if the stockyard wants it - they've got a lot of western paraphernalia and no small number of the horse's progeny was auctioned through there.

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