I figured I'd post this here. If it needs to be moved, my apologies. Anyway, I thought I'd share what I've just recently discovered about pet cremation. My baby boy Dick passed away a week ago today. I paid (or at least I thought I paid) for him to be shipped off, cremated, and returned to me in an urn. The vet failed to send Dick's body this week to the crematorium ("clerical error + they tried to bill me to have tests sent out, posthumously), so his body was "on hold", which was unbeknownst to me all week until I called and inquired. Thankfully someone told me that I should have a private service cremate him vs. the vet, because here's what this particular vet's office does (which I verified):
All deceased animals are held until each Friday, at which time they are shipped off together, cremated en mass (for the vet hospital to save money), and the ashes are divided up based on how many animals were in the "order", and then given back to the owners. It's a nice little disgusting racket: Vet charges $100 plus for the service, 20+ animals per week per "order", crematorium charges a nominal fee for ONE cremation, Vet's office makes a nice profit for essentially nothing.....grieving owners receive ashes of many different animals and are none the wiser. Beautiful, huh?
Luckily the emergency vet's incompetence in my case bought me some time so that I could hire out a private cremation service who understands the sensitive nature of all of this and the fact that I want to have MY cat's ashes and ONLY my cat's ashes brought back to me. Fee was $250, which includes everything. Just wanted to give everyone here a heads up for what it's worth, because apparently this shady practice is VERY pervasive in the "industry".........That's what I was told, anyway.
All deceased animals are held until each Friday, at which time they are shipped off together, cremated en mass (for the vet hospital to save money), and the ashes are divided up based on how many animals were in the "order", and then given back to the owners. It's a nice little disgusting racket: Vet charges $100 plus for the service, 20+ animals per week per "order", crematorium charges a nominal fee for ONE cremation, Vet's office makes a nice profit for essentially nothing.....grieving owners receive ashes of many different animals and are none the wiser. Beautiful, huh?
Luckily the emergency vet's incompetence in my case bought me some time so that I could hire out a private cremation service who understands the sensitive nature of all of this and the fact that I want to have MY cat's ashes and ONLY my cat's ashes brought back to me. Fee was $250, which includes everything. Just wanted to give everyone here a heads up for what it's worth, because apparently this shady practice is VERY pervasive in the "industry".........That's what I was told, anyway.