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March 28, 2024

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Spring Housing Guide

Some businesses help people cope with the death of their pets

It should have been an exciting day for sophomore Ashley Ruffing. On April 20, 2007, she interviewed for a scholarship given out by a local business, prom was coming up on Saturday and graduation was rapidly approaching. That morning she noticed her tabby cat Whiskers, a 6th birthday gift for her and her twin sister, was looking ‘very languid and started spitting up white stuff.’ ‘I wanted to skip the interview and take him to the vet,’ Ruffing said. She reluctantly went to the interview and rushed home to be with her companion of nearly 15 years. ‘I got home at 3 o’clock and called his name, but I heard no response,’ she said. ‘I knew something was wrong. I searched through the house and saw him lying on the bathroom floor. He didn’t respond to anything. I just sat there petting him and crying.’ The loss of Whiskers was especially hard for Ruffing because he had been part of her life for so long. ‘We grew up with him,’ she said. ‘He was always there.’ Like when losing a family member, pet owners go through a grieving process for their pets, said Tina Bulucea, a psychotherapist specializing in death counseling. Bulucea decided she wanted to help those like herself and Ruffing who have dealt with the loss of pet. In 2004, she opened Immortal Paw Prints in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights. Some of the services Bulucea provides include public support groups, in-home private grief counseling, pet memorialization, euthanasia decisions and pet funerals. The death of a pet can sometimes be a tougher grieving process than the death of a family member, Bulucea said. Often people who’ve never had pets can’t understand that, but she said she has heard people say, ‘I cried when my pet died, but not when my mother died.’ ‘Pets offer unconditional love, they are never not available, they never judge people and never have conflicts with you,’ Bulucea said. ‘Often pets have been with people through their own conflicts, such as the death of a family member, and the pet is there to comfort them.’ The death of a pet for an elderly person can be especially difficult, said John Bayliff, president of Bayliff and Son Pet Crematory in Cridersville, which is seven miles south of Lima. ‘Pets are very much a part of the family today,’ he said. ‘Especially with older folks who might not have children living with them, pets become family members and friends.’ Ruffing held a small teary-eyed funeral with family members and neighbors within a couple days of Whiskers’ death. ‘I was still crying,’ Ruffing said. ‘I hadn’t accepted he was gone yet.’ Her twin made a clay gravestone reading ‘In loving memory of Whiskers’ with paw prints imprinted underneath. The gravestone sits under a big pine tree in the middle of a long tree line in their backyard. It was his favorite place to be, Ruffing said, because of the shade. Choosing a burial location for a pet is a very personal choice for a pet owner, Bayliff said. Often families don’t tell Bayliff what they will do with the ashes, but he said many people who do tell him don’t like to have the urn on display in their home. ‘Some place the ashes in a family farm and some scatter the ashes in the backyard because that was the pet’s favorite place to be,’ he said. A good share of families who get their pets cremated at Bayliff and Son request that they be buried with their pet’s remains, Bayliff said. ‘One woman bred shelties and we had cremated six of them for her, and all six of the pet urns were placed in her casket with her,’ Bayliff said. The most important part of Bayliff’s job is to serve as a good listener to grieving families, he said. ‘We let them tell us what they might need,’ he said. ‘It’s one of those things where there is no standard pet service, so we tailor it to a family’s needs and desires.’ A photo collage of Whiskers is what Ruffing has to remind her of her fallen feline friend. ‘It is really hard to look at,’ she said. ‘It does take me back to all the memories I have of him.’ These memories include her and her twin putting Whiskers in diapers and pushing him around in a stroller. ‘I guess we kind of played harshly with him, but in the end we still loved him,’ she said. Not all pets die naturally like Whiskers, and the hardest decision a pet owner has to make is whether or not to euthanize a sick pet, Bulucea said. This is a decision she has made before and one she helps others face. ‘It was a difficult decision because I had to decide whether I was ready to make that decision for my pet,’ Bulucea said. ‘Since his quality of life was poor and he would be unhappy it made it easier to make the decision and to go through the grieving process.’ Bulucea offers to go to the veterinarian with those going to euthanize their pet to support them during the process. ‘Often veterinarians don’t know how to deal with someone crying over their pet,’ she said. ‘It makes them uncomfortable, so I can be there to support them.’

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