Pets in Boxes, Cremains & Your Family Pet

Recently my favoritest dog in the whole wide world, Sparky, had to be put to sleep. It crushed my mom, and I still feel bad about it. But she was old, like really old, like 17 years old! She had a good exceptionally long life. Where my parents live there is a preponderance of coyotes, wolves, bears and other critters who would smell dead dog in the ground and think "free meal!" and dig it up. We did not want such a fate to befall our beloved Sparky, so for the first time in our lives we had a pet cremated.

Now as long as I have been alive, where ever we lived was a veritable pet cemetary. The back yard at the old house has the remains of at least 3 dogs, 6 cats and a duck. Should the new owner begin excavating around the trees in back, he's prolly gonna freak out. Even our old cabin up north, the cabin now owned by my dad's friend Bob, has the remains of a dog in the yard. So this whole "get 'em cremated" thing was a new concept to us.

A few weekends ago I went up to my parent's house. It was my aunt's birthday, and I, never to miss out on a free meal, went up to have good food at Mamma's the Italian restaurant we all love so much. As I am sitting on my chair in the house watching what ended up a really wonderfulyl bad Sci-Fi Saturday Night movie entitled Sands of Oblivion, my mom hands me a box.

Mind you, my mother shops a lot on the TV. She is a big fan of both QVC and HSN, so when I am handed a non-descript cardboard box I assume it's the latest crap she's bought. But this box was different, this box was heavy, like really heavy. I look inside, and there is a black metal tin box with flowers on it. Then she says it:

"That's Sparky."

WTF? Who does that to someone? Here's the box containing your dead dog! Enjoy! Oh wait, I know, my mother does that!

I will reiterate, that I am shocked as shit about how much ashes-de-pooch weigh. In life she weighed in around 55 lbs, in death she weighs in at 3 lbs, per the UPS box label. I know it's not the tin, unless they put a piece of lead inside of it, it's just how much cremated dog weighs.

Update: Since this was originally written (yeah I know and not published until now) we had to put down an additional dog, the infamous Casey Jean, our notoriuous golden lab. Whether you remember when the wild dog bit her in the ass, or when she got stung on the eye lid by a bee, or when she impaled herself on a stick, all should know in the end Cancer is what got her. Which was surprising considering the accident prone nature of this dog. Casey is also now a Dog in a Box.

I've also gotten a report from Amanda on Cat in a Box, which strangely comes in the same tin, just a smaller version. Apparently these tins are used a lot for tea and pet cremains. Go figure. I wish I could find a decent photo of it, maybe Amanda will be willing to provide one so you can all know what to expect.

I've also heard about Horse in a Box and apparently that weighs a metric ton and is so big you could not display it on a mantel. BUT you do not receive your horse in a tea tin, instead you get them back in a wooden crate, I mean hand-made wooden cremains box, which shockingly looks like a shipping crate. I only have this knowledge courtesy of a conversation overheard at theMN Futurity Horse Show. People like to converse about how to dispose of a horse, mostly I think cos it's supposed to be illegal to bury a horse nearly every where but Kentucky, but somehow horse remains disappear in the middle of the night. I have it on good authority that Greenway Commander never made it to a rendering factory...