Private Pet Crematorium Questions

For the life of me, I can't figure out why the answers to some of this apply to a story. It looks like way too much detail for a scene that should be dealing with emotions rather than the cut and dry mechanics of the scene.

1. A necropsy is expensive and time consuming. Unless there is some unusual circumstances, a crematorium is not going to have a vet do one. They're going to take you at your word. That said, your emotional tone as you provide the information is going to be very important to your credibility here.

2. Most crematoriums work on a schedule. You can schedule a time for a private cremation, where you can wait and watch in a private room while your pet is cremated by itself, or you can have your pet cremated with other animals without going anywhere near the crematorium. A small dog takes a couple of hours with larger dogs taking longer.

3. No, but again, your emotional tone is going to be very indicative of what's going on here. If you're not credible, I imagine the questions are going to become more extensive.

4. They want sufficient information so as to be able to identify the transaction down the road. They'll want to know what animal they cremated six months later. So they're going to ask some questions.

Jim Clark-Dawe

D.L. Shepherd said:

Thanks so much for the info. I'll PM you with why it is important to the story, since it is a spoiler.

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So often what is a spoiler is the real basis for the question and is needed for the right answer. And we very rarely care about what's going into the story, as we have enough to deal with of our own.

Jim Clark-Dawe

Nobody determines cause of death in animals, not even the vet. Pet cremation is done in an industrial incinerator, not for viewing. Most run a schedule of doing them on certain days ad giving you an urn with ashes that you can pick up. You can go on the day they run them and wait. Name, address, phone and credit card are the documentation you provide, some will want a rabies certificate or license, and only the credit card needs to be real. Face it, nobody is paying for a random animal to be cremated.

What do you really need for your story? And why don't you just call your local pet cremation location and ask? They'll even give you a tour.

Jeff

WeaselFire said:

Nobody determines cause of death in animals, not even the vet. Pet cremation is done in an industrial incinerator, not for viewing. Most run a schedule of doing them on certain days ad giving you an urn with ashes that you can pick up. You can go on the day they run them and wait. Name, address, phone and credit card are the documentation you provide, some will want a rabies certificate or license, and only the credit card needs to be real. Face it, nobody is paying for a random animal to be cremated.

What do you really need for your story? And why don't you just call your local pet cremation location and ask? They'll even give you a tour.

Jeff

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Sorry, what? Of course they do. I mean mostly you want trained vet pathologists to do necropsies, same as in human cases, but of course they do.

Who do you think works with the cops? With individuals? With zoos? With the CDC? With everyone else who wants to know that?

Never visited the crematorium myself, but working for a vet I dealt with them on a regular basis. Short answer is, they didn't care how the animal died. There's no particular concern about zoonautic diseases because burning corpses is how you would deal with those diseases anyway, and animals were sent to the crematorium after all the medical stuff (including post-mortum analyses when appropriate) had been completed by the vet. They're basically a disposal service.

The pet crematoriums in our area do brisk business because it's illegal to bury animals within the city limits or to put them in the landfill, so they have contracts with the city for roadkill disposal as well as handling pet remains. The city will scan roadkill dogs and cats for microchips and inform the owner if one can be reached, but beyond that, they all get burned. (Although if someone wants to take Fido's body home and arrange a backyard funeral, everybody looks the other way).

We offered disposal services at our vet and functioned as a go-between for the owners and the crematorium. Our pricing was basically whatever the crematorium charged + $5 as a handling fee. (It wasn't cheap either. Back then, cremation ran between $150 and $400 depending on the weight of the animal and whether you wanted ashes returned, and the prices went up every year like clockwork. The ashes returned option cost more, because that required them to burn that particular animal alone rather than doing several at once). The crematorium provided all transportation of bodies and ashes.

Our local ones both had a very simple form. It asked for our contact info (as we were the ones paying them), as well as the animal's name, and owners name, address, and phone number. There were also a few boxes to check depending on the services you wanted. That was pretty much it. There was definitely no field for cause of death.

Re: the owner's phone number. We were originally told that it was needed so that the crematorium could contact owners and let them know when the ashes would be returned to the vet clinic, so they could arrange pickup. However, we discovered that they were actually cold-calling grieving owners to try and upsell them expensive urns, paw-print memorials, locks of fur in little pouches, and hundreds of dollars worth of other services, complete with guilt trips implying that if they REALLY loved their deceased pet, they'd purchase XYZ.

We were livid when we found out and changed crematoriums immediately (we were lucky enough to have two in the area, they're not exactly widespread).

The one we changed to also had a space for the owner's phone number on their forms, but we made a point to leave the field blank, as we didn't want to risk exposing people to that kind of predatory selling again. The new place never cared about the omission.

I'm not, btw, suggesting it's the case in every unexplained death, as in the case of humans, but it's not unusual; vets will offer individuals, cops often want and need the info, etc.