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History
Many human cultures buried animal remains. For example, the Ancient Egyptians mummified and buried cats, which they considered deities, and the largest known dog cemetery in the ancient world was discovered at the Ashkelon National Park in Ashkelon, Israel.
London's Hyde Park was the site of an informal pet cemetery between 1881 and 1903, in the gatekeeper's garden. From the first burial of "Cherry" until its official closure in 1903, it received 300 burials with miniature headstones, with a final special burial of the Royal Marines mascot dog "Prince" in 1967.
Cimetière des Chiens in Asnières-sur-Seine in Paris, dating from 1899, is an elaborate, sculpted pet cemetery believed to be one of the first public zoological necropolis in the world.
America's largest and oldest pet cemetery is in Hartsdale, New York. It dates from 1896, when a veterinarian working out of Manhattan offered to let a grieving pet owner bury her dog in his hillside apple orchard. Today, it is the final resting place for more than 70,000 animals. The Hartsdale Pet Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. Some other famous American pet cemeteries are Aspin Hill Memorial Park in Silver Spring, Maryland, where celebrity animals, such as "General Grant of R.K.O. Jiggs", better known from his role in The Little Rascals as Petey, seven of J. Edgar Hoover's dogs, such as his Cairn terrier Spee De Bozo, and internees at the "Medical Rats Memorial" are buried; as well as the Pet Memorial Cemetery in Calabasas, CA, where Hopalong Cassidy's horse, Topper, Steven Spielberg's Jack Russell Terrier, and Rudolph Valentino's dog, Kabar, are buried.
Burial options
Pets and other animals to which people are emotionally attached are often ceremonially buried. Most families bury deceased pets on their own properties, typically in the yard. For example, American art collector Peggy Guggenheim is buried alongside the grave of her dogs on the grounds of her home, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni (now the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, an art museum on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy).
Pet cemeteries offer single and multiple plot options. A specially designed pet casket or vault may be used. In cremation, the remains can be saved in an urn, buried, or scattered. In a memorial cremation, several pets are cremated together. The resulting cremated remains are then scattered on the cemetery grounds. In most cases pet cemeteries will have a chapel, and there will be facilities to hold either a non-denominational Christian or, alternatively, a non-religious ceremony.
At some cemeteries, such as Aspin Hill Memorial Park in Silver Springs, Maryland human and animal remains may be interred alongside each other. In January 2010, West Lindsey District Council gave permission for a site in the village of Stainton by Langworth to inter animal remains alongside human remains as part of a "green burial" site, making it the first place in England where pets could be buried alongside their owners.