Meet The People Who Help Your Pets Die

I don't need to tell you how it feels to lose a pet. 

Here in Australia, we seem to have a particularly strong connection to pets, at least according to the numbers. We have one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the world, with about 69 per cent of households in Australia containing an animal companion. Unsurprisingly, dogs are the most common, at 48%, followed by cats, 33 per cent.

Perhaps it's the isolation ingrained in the psyche of people who inhabit a giant island so far away from the rest of the world, with a population so small, spread across a space so large. When humans fail us, or are simply just too far away, many turn to companions from other species. We love them like family. They are family.

We might visit our family once a week, or once a month… maybe our family is on the other side of the world. But we see our pets every day. Your pets are always there. Until one day they take their last breath, and, all of a sudden, they’re not.

It’s devastating. But, for some, this is the everyday. 

When your furry or feathery or scaly loved one takes its last breath, there is a whole industry of people who step in to help smooth the process. Practical heads in a storm of emotion.

But who are the people who help your pets die, and help memorialise them with dignity that warrants losing a loved one? We sat down with home euthanasia vets, pet cremators, and taxidermists to find out.

Audrey has been a vet for 30 years on the north side of Brisbane. Three years ago, she founded Rainbow Bridge, an in-home pet euthanasia service, in response to the increasing demand she observed firsthand while working in clinics.

VICE: Hey Audrey, why are more people opting for home euthanasia?

Audrey: Most animals don't like going to the vet, especially cats. And sometimes it's hard for people to have that done in a clinic where there's other people waiting and phones ringing and dogs barking. At home, they go to sleep in their bed or on their couch or on the grass or near their favourite tree in the backyard. It's quite a privilege to be able to look after animals and their people at a time like this, because it's hard. And we try to make it a little bit less hard.

How do you prepare the pet and the owner? 

We have a phone conversation, if possible, or when we get there. But preferably by phone before. And then we go through the process of what's going to happen, in what order, and what they might expect to see. Most animals just drift off to sleep very gently. Sometimes, very rarely, you see a little bit of twitching of the muscles, particularly around the mouth, and we always warn people that may happen. Because if it does happen, and they haven't been told it may be a normal part of the process, it can be a little bit frightening for them.

What causes those differences in reactions?

It's just the reaction to the medications we use. And there's no rhyme or reason to it for the most part.

Is the medication the same for all species, with only the dosage adjusted, or are there specific medications for different species?

There are many different protocols, and every vet will have their own favourite. I think the one you use is the one you're most familiar with, so the dose will be adjusted but the medication will be the same. The last thing you want at a time like this is to have a surprise. It's like anaesthesia, they say the safest anaesthesia is the one you're most familiar with.

What's the most unique animal that you've gone out to? 

A hatchling quail that had come out of the egg quite deformed, and the owners wanted it euthanised, rather than just let it die. So that was unexpected because, I mean, these people were very caring and obviously fond of their little birds, and they wanted a peaceful departure for it, rather than something long and drawn out.

What does a typical day — or night — look like for you? Are you seeing multiple pets a day?

My busiest day was 8 pets in a day.

That must've been quite emotionally taxing.

It's very, very draining. Yeah. I mean, people say, you must be used to it, and you don't get used to it at all. I mean, this is a beloved life that's ending. I think what I've realised is there's an acceptance that this is part of the big picture, it's an inevitable end to the life of a pet you love. So you kind of accept that this is going to happen. But, no, you never get used to it. And yeah, a day like that is very mentally exhausting. 

And how do you deal with that? 

I've come to an acceptance that this is what we need to do for them. And it's a gift for them. It's a kindness. It is a loss, but you're helping these pets. And that's what we hang on to and that's what gives us the strength to do this. But there's always one or two where I jump back in the car and have a bit of a sniffle away from their place. And I think that's okay. You have to acknowledge these feelings because you feel for the owners. The pets are okay, by the time we finish, the pets are in a better place and the suffering has eased. But we've left a lot of grief and pain with people. If it's a dog breed like my dog, or if it's an elderly person with an elderly dog and they're singing to it as they go to sleep — that tugs at the heartstrings. It really does.

Why do you do it?

It feeds the soul.

Was this something you always wanted to do as a career?

No, no. People were asking for the service a whole lot more. Most vet clinics don't have the staff to send out a vet nurse away from the clinic to do house calls. So we decided we would offer that service. I still work in-clinic four mornings a week, because that pays my mortgage. But this is... the rewards are not just financial. We meet beautiful people at a terrible time and we do them a really great service, I think we do a nice job. 

I kind of like the routine of the clinic, the sore ears and the limps and the skin rashes, because it's a balance. So my day job pays the mortgage, and this service kind of feeds my soul a little bit.

Deanne, or ‘Dee’ as she calls herself on our phone call, was 15 when she applied to be a receptionist at a funeral home. Within a year she was training to be a funeral director. Before moving to the animal side, she managed a funeral home and a crematorium in Queensland for 30 years. She now runs My Best Friend’s Farewell, a 24-hour pet cremation service. 

VICE: Hey Dee, why did you make the switch from human to pet?

Dee: I had always been interested in the pet side, but it wasn't until we lost our 17-year-old little doggie a few years ago that it really started to get me thinking about it more. I sort of realised, at that time when she passed away, that this was really important. And it was important to me that she was just as well cared for as any other family member would be.

What are the main differences between the human side and pet side?

I don't really see a huge difference. I feel that they deserve the respect equally. Obviously, the regulations surrounding humans and pets are a little bit different. But other than that, it's very similar to the human side. It's important that people are given choices. And it's important that the grief is validated. One of the things we often hear is, ‘I shouldn't be this upset, because it's just a dog’. No, it's not, it's your family member.

If I lost my dog, I'd be devastated. It would feel like family – it is family. 

Yeah, it is family. In a lot of cases, we see our pets and interact with our pets a lot more than we actually interact with family members because they are there every day, whereas our family we might see once a week, once a month. And even though we don't necessarily communicate with them like we communicate with a human, they're always there. If you're watching TV, they're sitting on your lap, they're at your feet. 

The other thing I always think is that they're forever our babies. They're not like our children who can grow up and become independent — at some stage, our children will be able to go and get their own food, their own drink. They'll be able to rely on other people for entertainment. But our animals aren't like that. They rely on us for everything from the day you get them until the day they're gone. So, I think they're like our babies forever.

What does a typical day look like, because you've got a 24-hour service — is that rare in your industry or kind of standard?

Well, I actually thought it was fairly standard. But I'm starting to learn that it may not be as standard as I thought, where we came from the human side, if somebody passed away, we needed to get that person as quickly as possible into a refrigeration facility so that their body was in the best condition possible for their farewell. And I think that is equally important with animals. In fact, probably moreso. The breakdown of the body happens a lot more rapidly with a pet than what it actually does with a human. So it's really important to have that 24-hour service.

You're dealing with the families a lot. How do you deal with picking up all of that really sad emotional energy?

A lot of people say, 'I don't know how you do your job'. And I will tell you, the first few weeks, I thought, ‘What have I got myself in for here?’ After being in the funeral industry for 30 years, I thought I'd adapt quite well… But the way I have overcome that is by remembering that every pet that comes into our care had an amazing life, whether that life has been a short life, or whether that life has been a full life. I know they've been well-loved because their families have taken the time to have them cremated — like any other family member.

That's kind of beautiful.

Absolutely. It's more than just clinical waste. We're not leaving them at the vet to just dispose of in whatever way they can. Like, this is my child or my best buddy — I want him or her looked after and treated with the care and respect that they deserve.

Alison has been working in pet cremation for 20 years. She started as manager of the Gold Coast branch of Pets Eternal, then bought into it after a couple of years. 10 years ago, Greencross bought Pets Eternal Gold Coast, and Alison and her husband moved to Brisbane to run Pets Eternal in Greenbank crematorium — a large property which started its life as a cemetery 50 years ago, adding the crematorium in the mid 80s. Before that she was a veterinary nurse and a zookeeper. 

VICE: Can you tell me about Pets Eternal?

Alison: We started just as a small company on the Gold Coast, and then my husband got very sick, so we decided to sell businesses and change a few things. And then moved up here [to Brisbane], and we were going to stay just 18 months or so to see how we liked it — and that was 10 years ago. In the meantime, my husband passed away four years ago.

I'm sorry to hear.

It was a long long battle with cancer. But this place probably saved him. When he was well, he used to do a lot of the maintenance work here. So the property is on five acres. And we have a pet cemetery in the front yard, and then our crematorium and workshops and things in the back of the property. And I live right in the middle. So he did a lot of the yard work, and I truly think that absolutely gave him some more years because it gave him something to do, so it was probably a lifesaver for quite a few years.

It sounds like a nice space.

Yeah, we're very lucky. We're not actually that far from Brisbane. But it feels like you could be a long way away. I own the property next door as well, so it gives us like 10 acres of no one near us. We have alpacas and llamas on that side of us, and they're sort of a bit of sanity as well when things get a little bit tough here — we go out the back and breathe and talk to an alpaca and clean up a bit of alpaca poo and it puts it all back into perspective again.

You've got alpacas out there next door and you've come from a zookeeping background, it seems like you're very connected to animals. Has this been a lifelong thing?

Yeah, I grew up from about the age of 7 in veterinary clinics, I've got a family of vets. So I don't know a lot different.

Can you walk me through the process of cremation?

So we do about anywhere between 600 and 700 individual cremations per month. And we cover fairly big areas — we go right up as far as Noosa down to Ballena, down south and then out to Toowoomba. The majority of our work is based in the Gold Coast and Brisbane and the greater Brisbane area. We have seven cars on the road that do our transfers — specially fitted out vehicles that go out to people's homes and to our veterinary clinics, they're set up with really lovely beds that can be pulled out so clients can do a viewing and see their animal strapped in and wrapped in a blanket and treated with that dignity they deserve. 

And then when our drivers come back here, we have four mortuary facilities, so pretty much like humans — they’re basically big cold rooms. And they're all laid out. They're all labelled, and we can track them all the way through their process. Then, when they're prepared for their individual cremation, we check them again, check that the identity matches what we've been given. We usually do a little lock of fur and a paw print as standard to send home with clients, so they've got a little memorial. And then they're all cremated individually in single chamber machines made specifically for pet cremation. We can probably cremate 30 to 35 animals per day. If they're little, we can do a lot more than that.

I imagine that most of the animals you're getting are dogs and cats, but what are some of the most unique that you've worked with?

We had an amazing porcupine from one of our zoos that we work with, which was very cool. We get a lot of rats, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, birds, the occasional fish, snakes and lizards. So a lot of your exotic type pets that have became very popular now. We've done a red panda, we've done a lemur, we do a few alpacas and the odd llama, some of your smaller sort of farm animals, so goats, sheep, calves. And we get more random unusual creatures from the zoos that we work with, which is often really cool — we had a little capybara, not so long ago. 

When I started, it was 70%, dogs, 30% cats, and very little of anything else. But now we're probably doing 5% exotics every week, and cats are probably up to about 40%. There are a lot more people who will spend the money on a cremation now because they're much closer to their animals. And they don't have their own backyards to bury. And the other option of a council burial is not very pleasant. So yeah, it's become much more popular, which is nice — it's a nice way to say goodbye. And even if people choose to just have the ashes home to scatter or bury them, it still means that poor pet's body is not sitting in a council facility somewhere and getting mass buried, which is not pleasant.

How do you deal with being surrounded by so much death and sadness?

It is something that takes a really special person. I take a lot of time selecting staff. I make sure that they are people who are kind and caring and have empathy. But they also have to be very strong. I've got an amazing team here and could not do any of this without the team I've got — some have been with me for as long as 18 years. Because you're going from one situation to another, you are dealing with deceased animals, but you also deal with grieving clients, you can be dealing with children, you can be dealing with quite distressing situations, if you go to a home and animals have been left there for a couple of days. 

But the way we look at it is that anyone who chooses to have an individual cremation cares about their animal, therefore, that animal has probably had a really good life. And that's exactly what we want for all of our pets — that they've had that good life, they've had a good home, they haven't been mistreated. So you feel for the client, because of what they're going through. But the animals, they're here because they'd been looked after, and that can't be a bad thing. 

Karen has been a taxidermist for five years. She comes from a background of hairdressing and education, but tells me she has always been fascinated by taxidermy. She works for Rest in Pieces, an animal preservation company in Northcote, Victoria, which offers services like taxidermy; skull, fur, and paw preservation; wet preservation; cremation, and wet preservation.

 VICE: Hey Karen, why taxidermy?

Karen: My love of animals, love of nature, science, art — all that sort of gets bundled into taxidermy. I think the way people perceive taxidermy is changing, so it's a great time to be involved in it. But obviously, there's still quite a few people who don't see past the fact that we're dealing with dead animals. They often feel that we go out seeking dead animals for our art, which is not the case. The beautiful thing about taxidermy, from my point of view is, you are honouring the animal by doing your best to create something beautiful for it. 

Can you run me through what Rest in Pieces does?

We are an animal preservation company. We run classes, we do commissions, sometimes we will do restoration on a taxidermied piece that has been handled a lot or has an infestation or is aged. We also have several retail outlets that we make pieces for. We do insect domes and frames — insects tend to be the gateway drug to taxidermy. As far as taxidermy goes, we do all the different aspects, we do wet preservation, which is where you take an animal and preserve it in a fluid, and then house it in a glass vessel. Years ago, lots of scientific specimens were housed this way, so that you could actually look at them and learn from them.

I'm curious about wet preservation, is there a limit in terms of size?

The only difficult thing about the size is the volume of the liquid that they need to be mounted in. The largest one we’ve done was a fully grown black and white cat called Fluffy. It takes several months to do it on a big animal, and we had 40 litres of solution for Fluffy, so that's like 40 kilos. Which meant getting a case that wouldn't flex because then we have to seal and clamp it all into place — so there's a lot of engineering logistics as well as the preservation. Once Fluffy was immersed in solution, with his fluffy fur, he actually looked serene — like he was floating, and it was absolutely beautiful. 

I feel like your job is quite bittersweet, because on the one hand you get to do a job that is creatively fulfilling, which is very rare for a lot of people — but then you're dealing with a lot of sadness; you're speaking to people regularly who are dealing with loss. How do you handle that?

That's probably the most difficult thing. Sometimes clients will bring their pet to us and they're dealing with this unbelievable grief, right at that moment. So it's a really big responsibility, but it's also something that is quite an honour because you see people in their most vulnerable state. And the connection that people have with their pets is very strong, so sometimes you do have to just sit with them, and let them hold their pet or just allow them to grieve right there in front of you. I am a complete empath, and when somebody starts crying, it's really hard for me not to. 

You need to have compassion and understanding of what they're going through, and you can't rush somebody, you really have to let them sit and have their moment. But I think that the return — the reuniting of the pet with their owner again — that's the part that is really quite amazing because it brings so much joy and relief. But it also reignites that grief and loss again, so it's this really difficult range of emotions that somebody goes through standing there with their pet now preserved. 

So the emotional stuff is hard, and I guess for me, the longer I do it, the more emotional I get it — I think the more depth of emotion I have, and the more understanding that I have for how connected people are to their pets and how they grieve for them. It's certainly a positive and a negative about the job, there's an added responsibility because you only get one chance with that pet. So that weighs heavily. But also the joy of being able to reunite somebody with a really loved pet, at the end of it is really beautiful.