“That first day after you passed away, I couldn’t bring myself to take you to the crematorium right away, so I kept you by my side for one more day. I slept poorly, and every time I awoke I wanted to get up and move close to you and pet you again, because once you were gone, I would never again have the chance to hold you close as I once did. Before the cremation, the Taoist priest picked your body up, and I saw that all the stiffness had passed out of it and it was once again soft, as if you had received my heartfelt prayers. After the cremation, I placed your ashes into the urn with my own hands, and had the words ‘beloved child’ engraved on the urn, because to me you were my own small child.” This is an entry made by a woman who kept a diary of her feelings in the wake of the death of her dog, reflecting the increasingly close emotional ties that bind people and their pets today.

Pet funeral services are increasingly similar to those for humans. Consumers can choose coffin types, attire, offerings made from paper (such as a paper dog house), and other accoutrements parallel to those offered at Taoist funerals for people. The photo above was taken at the pet memorial area set up by Lungyen, a leading mortuary firm.

Statistics from the Council of Agriculture indicate that in 2011 people in Taiwan had 1.53 million dogs and 370,000 cats as house pets. The Greater Taipei Area accounted for nearly 30% of the total pet population.

In addition, a survey has shown that 21% of Taiwan’s 7.2 million households have at some point raised pets. When compared to the UK (95%), the US (63%), and Japan (35%), Taiwan still shows considerable potential for growth in the pet-keeping population.

Why do people today have such a passion for pets? What is so special about the emotional links between people and animals?

Guo Hui­juan, a writer for taiwanfuneral.com and an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Golden-Ager Industry Management at Chao­yang University of Technology, notes that in modernized countries there has been a steady increase in the percentage of people who remain unmarried, get married late in life, or choose not to have children. When you also consider that people in urban societies are more “atomized”—which is to say more emotionally distant from each other—then it is easy to see how, in human eyes, pets have transitioned from “guard dogs” and “playthings” to “life partners.”

“Pets are not scheming. As long as you are kind to them, they will always repay you with affection. Pet owners can feel they have something that belongs exclusively to themselves, that spends time only with them. Spending every day side by side, the happiness of each dependent on the other, naturally the emotional sense of attachment becomes very deep,” says Guo.

Pet funeral services are increasingly similar to those for humans. Consumers can choose coffin types, attire, offerings made from paper (such as a paper dog house), and other accoutrements parallel to those offered at Taoist funerals for people. The photo above was taken at the pet memorial area set up by Lungyen, a leading mortuary firm.

Precisely because the relationship between a pet and its human is so extraordinary, a growing number of people are handling the death of their animals with solemn rituals, as an expression of how much they will miss their beloved pet and how important it was to them.

It comes as quite a shock, then, to discover that legally speaking, the corpse of a pet is defined as “waste matter”! This is because the disposal of pet corpses falls through the cracks between different pieces of legislation.

Chen Wen­jin, director of the Yi­lan Animal and Plant Disease Control Center, explains that the Animal Welfare Act, the prevailing legislation governing pets and the pet industry, only provides for treatment of animals in their lifetimes (such as breeding, sale, raising, and management), but has no regulations governing their disposal after death. The Mortuary Service Administration Act, on the other hand, covers only matters related to disposition of deceased Homo sapiens. Pet corpses are explicitly mentioned only in the Waste Disposal Act, which simply says that, like household trash, they can be disposed of in a garbage truck so long as they are properly bagged.

Chen says that while the trash-truck method is legal, it’s not likely most pet owners will feel comfortable with it. It also carries the risk of transmission of disease. This is why all over Taiwan public immunization centers for domestic animals, as well as animal welfare centers, have for some time now offered pet cremation services. A citizen merely needs to deliver the deceased pet to the appropriate facility, which will turn it over to a private cremation center for collective disposal. The ashes, which pose no risk to the environment, are always disposed of in a natural setting, mainly by being scattered or sprinkled onto the earth.

A year and a half ago, Blackie, the “top dog” among campus canines at Taipei National University of Nursing and Health Sciences, passed away. Students and teachers at the university arranged all the details of her passing themselves, including a memorial service, turning their sorrow into an expression of love. The left photo (courtesy of the TNUNHS Institute of Life and Death Education and Counseling) shows the body being prepared for viewing. The right photo shows the school’s “campus dog volunteer team.”

Nonetheless, many owners want to have their pets cremated alone and to keep the ashes as a memorial. Many even want to have an anthropomorphic service or ritual in memoriam. Private pet funeral companies have arisen to meet this demand.

According to the most recent survey by taiwanfuneral.com, there are currently 20-plus enterprises specializing in pet funerals in major urban areas in Taiwan. Total costs for a funeral (including pickup of the pet and owner, cremation, and placement of the ashes in an urn) depend on the weight of the deceased, with a 6–10-kilo animal running at around NT$4500. Rental for an alcove in a columbarium costs anywhere from NT$10,000 to NT$30,000 for three years.

According to a market survey of the pet funeral industry jointly conducted in 2008 by the Institute of Life and Death Education and Counseling at the Tai­pei College of Nursing (now National Tai­pei University of Nursing and Health Sciences) and the Department of Life-and-Death Studies at Nan­hua University, there were at that time already eight pet funeral firms in the Greater Tai­pei Area alone, with a total of 28,800 columbarium alcoves, of which 12,000 had already been sold at the time of the survey at an average rate of about 1600 a year. These figures indicate the potential market in pet funeral services.

Back at the end of 2011, the well-known funeral services company the Lung­yen Group, seeing the commercial opportunities in pet funerals, invested NT$50 million to found a pet funeral services subsidiary. Its pet memorial hall is on the same grounds as its hall for humans and it looks as elegant and refined as an art museum.

Wu Xin­ming, director of Lung­yen’s Ming­sheng office, says that the firm decided to begin providing pet funeral services in response to repeated requests from many former customers. Lung­yen, which already had a reputation for excellence, employs a licensed funeral director to oversee each ceremony. They were also the first to begin contracting for funeral ­services during the lifetime of the pet, offering a guaranteed three-year rented spot in a memorial hall in addition to the memorial service itself, for a prepaid price of NT$60,000. They have already sold over 100 contracts totaling roughly NT$8 million in revenues.

A year and a half ago, Blackie, the “top dog” among campus canines at Taipei National University of Nursing and Health Sciences, passed away. Students and teachers at the university arranged all the details of her passing themselves, including a memorial service, turning their sorrow into an expression of love. The left photo (courtesy of the TNUNHS Institute of Life and Death Education and Counseling) shows the body being prepared for viewing. The right photo shows the school’s “campus dog volunteer team.”

Guo Hui­juan points out that the pet funeral industry is like any other new industry in that there is no regulatory structure or oversight mechanism in place. In its absence, most pet funeral firms are forced to register their companies as being in the “waste disposal industry” or “warehouse industry.” Consumers who have complaints have nowhere to turn.

Guo calls on the government to devote attention to creating a legal framework for the pet funeral industry. Consumers, meanwhile, must carefully evaluate their options and choose only firms that have a good reputation, are financially sound, and are transparent with information.

However, a lot of pet owners are by no means thrilled at the idea of their pet ending up in a big glossy columbarium. They would prefer funeral methods that are closer to nature and more environmentally friendly, such as scattering or sprinkling the cremated remains in a wooded area, meadow, flowerbed, or even at sea.

In 2008, the Taipei Mortuary Services Office created the nation’s first locale where pet owners can scatter the ashes of their pet in a bucolic natural setting. Called the “Secret Garden,” it is located next to the woodland burial area for humans at Tai­pei’s Fu De Public Cemetery. Occupying a space of over 1600 square meters, it includes four flower beds and is decorated with a small doghouse, a windmill, and statues of small dogs.

Statistics from the MSO show that the Secret Garden has handled 2800 ash scatterings for pets over the last five years. These pets have included not only dogs and cats, but also rabbits and other small creatures.

It’s worth mentioning in this context that the Yi­lan County Government, as part of the “Happy Yi­lan” project it has been promoting in recent years, has listed “considerate pet disposal services” as one indicator of quality of life. This year the Yi­lan Animal and Plant Disease Control Center and the Yuan­shan Fu­yuan Cemetery began offering “one-stop” animal funeral services including individual cremation, a memorial ceremony, and scattering the ashes into a flowerbed. These services are open to people from anywhere in Taiwan.

Scattering cremated remains into the earth or sea to naturally decompose is environmentally friendly and economical. The photo shows the “Secret Garden,” an area set aside at Taipei City’s Fu De Public Cemetery especially for scattering ashes of deceased pets.

In fact, there is no formula dictating how to say goodbye to an animal friend. Everyone should feel free to create a format that expresses their own feelings best.

A couple of years ago, a group of students and teachers at National Tai­pei University of Nursing and Health Services collectively undertook an educational journey about life by participating in a solemn memorial service of their own devising.

A decade or so ago, NTUNHS, like many schools, had many stray dogs living on and around campus, and inevitably there were incidents of teachers or students being bitten or chased. The situation took a turn for the better, however, thanks to the intercession of nursing school assistant professor Yeh Ming-lee. She proposed that the school train some of the dogs and utilize the territorial nature of canines so that they would police the campus and chase away interlopers, instead of the school trying endlessly to catch and put down every stray dog that wandered in. Of these “campus canines,” one known as Blackie was the doyenne of the pack.

Yeh recalls that Blackie was affectionate and very intelligent, and bringing her “into the fold” didn’t take much effort. She was a very loyal and dedicated dog, and continued to report for her guard duties even into very old age. She escorted countless young women across campus and back to their dorms at night, and the night shift of campus security considered her to be a dependable ally.

Blackie died in late 2011, and members of the campus dog team personally took charge of cleaning and preparing the corpse for the funeral, and making arrangements for the cremation. On the day of the memorial service, over 100 teachers, students, alumni, and past and current volunteers from the campus dog team filled the hall. There were few dry eyes when a commemorative video was shown, including pictures of Blackie wearing colorful neckerchiefs, sitting, sleeping, or in a playful “ready-to-pounce” pose. At the end of the service, many people placed flowers on the stage and then they all moved to the campus garden where Blackie’s ashes were scattered, thus bringing the service to a close.

Guo Hui­juan observes that the latest trend in the pet mortuary industry overseas is that a number of counseling institutions have entered the market, providing professional “grief counseling” and support services to owners facing the loss of a pet. This business is still in its infancy here in Taiwan.

You Yi­hang, a graduate student at the NTUNHS Institute of Life and Death Education and Counseling, who has had experience with grief counseling, avers that there is no need to spend a lot of money to have a meaningful memorial service or funeral, and there is no need to get hung up about formalities. The most important thing is that everyone is able to express his or her feelings, thoughts, and remembrances.

You could simply gather together a few friends to commemorate the deceased, you could write a poem for the pet, you could write the story of your pet’s life, or chant or sing as the mood strikes you, or you could just bawl your eyes out for a while.

Like the tide, life forces rise and ebb. That is simply nature’s way. When a beloved pet passes away, think not of what you have lost, but of what you have learned from them: the joy to be gained through feeling love for, and taking responsibility for, another living thing.