staple here i guess is the best way to say it is and it's an icon and you've provided funeral services for many years here i mean how many years now since eight hundred sixty you were in our sixth generation yet you had a new division to your to your business and you started a pet cemetery we did and i want to tell you a little story here i had a little dog otie little mention docs and that died in i think that was two and it was actually the first dog as an adult that i had to deal with and i didn't know what to do in the olden days we buried her dog and i yard  and without much fanfare without anything really you just kind of put your dog dug a hole put it out in a group in the ground i walked away and all of a sudden i had this dog a passed away i don't know what to do and i i thought well i'm going to call my house aaron answer the phone and he said no problem and he started to explain to me what he was going to do and he showed up at my house with such passion and compassion to take my little o and we had him cremated and i think that was probably about the time that you would start of the cemetery about oh two yeah yeah and it really took this you're sad you're upset but it really took the fear i'm going to call it away from what to do how to handle the anxiety yeah i think that's one of the things that sets our company apart from anybody else with a history of caring for people that we have for all those years we take those same passions and we're pet family ourselves we have amongst our family we most of fifty dogs i don't know their right horses and cows and chickens and you name it we have it i know there's regulations you can't bury your dog in the yard and so forth but the ease of operation and then you get a you save a focus phone call it says you can come pick up just absolutely amazing and the help so yeah you know you tell him i had a low i sure will but tell us a bit about how you decided to develop this pet cemetery and where that where that's leading to because two there was a tragic fire at the meadows too i think twenty eight horses got killed they were just going to take these horses to a refuge area i could let that happen  so i had some partners in cemetery at the time and i said hey i said we have to do something and we did and that started the day thanks to the start of that day and you know we've been of service to the pen owners ever since then but there's a beautiful mind with their knowledge in those horses mr bobbsey from greensburg pennsylvania happen though almost all of them and it was just a terrible loss yes some very excellent horses well bred horses there and to this day we still serve the shock but i knew what to do when i called i called the funeral home nineteen nobody was there and i went to the diverted somewhere else and they said we're in away six weeks later another one where my goodness gal i called by now or somebody from doormat came took her away and they're all with me i got a little little earns and there they are but so so i can express my thankfulness for the services you offer you do something that's really special yearly i think it is you have a service at the cemetery at memorial service yeah and then tell us about that well that's a there's a national pet day and i believe it's september the sixth right in that area someplace the first or second week in september and we put a public notice in the paper letting anybody that whether they we served him or not they're welcome to come to the service but i think this past year we had over one hundred people come and many of them bring their pets or have lost a pet recently and they have another pet  and they bring that in and what we do is we have a timesharing we have a slideshow we have pictures of the pets of people have submitted with all that together in a d v d normally and then we'll project that on the screen and will acknowledge each pet that way and we usually have someone come and also offer a blessing so that it's reassuring in the story a grief shared is grief diminished so when people come to that point in time everybody's there they all had a similar situation in their lives and they all have that same feeling and so people make new friends say they see friends they haven't seen for years and it's a it's a self satisfying situation people and you're about to lose them you know that's what happens we all go what do i do what are the steps that i needed to take when we do it as a pet well the first thing to do many pets might die home suddenly as you say without any warning and and but a lot of pets dying in a veterinarian hospital for one reason or another regardless of where the situation is best thing to do is to give us a call we will schedule a time with you and some people want to bring their own pet to us that's fine give a like us the sketch of the transfer we'll be happy to do that and we do that until eight thirty at night and after eight thirty we don't normally make a house call just because of the staffing requirements to do that but we will talk to you and explain everything and then try to ease your burden you know between now and then but what happens a lot of times two is that one of pet dies it's it might be during the day and the kids are in school while the worst thing for anybody that has children knows that you know that's here in the morning you come home he's not here what happened to the pet and you don't want to give the child misinformation so we offer it's actually how we started the pet funeral home scenario giving families like that an opportunity to coordinate and then there's no fire drill want to pet dies in so much as we don't have to hurry up and do it right now sometimes and many families today will want to give the children opportunity to say goodbye to the pets because for some families it's the first death experience really had and children learn from that experience whether it's with a pet or it's an aunt or not or a close or family member a mother and father grandparents and so you want to try to give them a good experience in a positive way will still bury their pets and when you when you do that then you have an opportunity to provide perpetual memorialization you can erect a marker you can have an engraved with all kinds of sayings and and anybody who's never been to to the cemetery you know it's interesting too it's almost like historical there are so many stories in our pet cemetery when you read the epithets that are on the tombstone and you see the pictures you know the love that these people have for these animals and so by creating a burial spot number one it's a permanent place and you always know where your pet is to your and if you're allowed to to put up a marker or whatever type that you want there are some regulations we have  but it's pretty pretty open and you can virtually put anything on there that you would like to do in a tasteful manner and so that's another alternative another alternative is that we have what's called a pet columbarium the same as we have for people  difference and that right away yes there is because there's a lot more effort to to do an individual cremation it takes more time more more fuel and so on and so forth and you know we do our utmost processed so the when the returned if you would open them up and look he wouldn't see any bone fragments or anything like that it's it's gratian color but it would be very fine very granular and you know that's what that's a lot of people do and sometimes they are but just a couple of situations here there are many urns just what we would call an urn and they can be identified as you can see here with the animal that aim of the camera so that the play can be inscribed with anything that you would like this is just an example of a black labrador retriever but there are many almost every breed is represented with a statuette like that another one is like this and this is made out of oak and this is out of cherry on the front well you're not going to get that that's not how it comes about yeah it wouldn't be that easy and on the front you're able to put your pet's picture in here and this and this is removable so that different seasons of the year you can change it so if you don't have to have the same picture and a lot of families choose another like that to give them that opportunity well crafted and beyond that this is a form of pet jewelry i don't know if you can see that well or not but that's a key chain and the pets a portion of that screen means are placed in the bottom and on the back of it we can have that engraved with the pet's name and whatever else you might you may like some people like to do things like that and here's something else that a lot of people one to do today and and this is placed a cream manes in this this happens to have the pop print on  it but this is worn on an on a necklace or you can put it on a key chain but a lot of people want just to have that part of their pet that close to them and makes them feel comfortable so those are just a couple of the different things but there are many many selections it's i just got some general numbers here for you but but if you want to give the audience some idea for an individual cremation the wait classifications usually go in like ten pound increments so up to forty pounds is  returned to the family the screen mainzer then scattered in the cemetery that's what the families desirous so you have the option to personalize it put a headstone there if you'd like take them home as you have put them in an urn like this it's not for us to tell people what to do but only to provide you with it as many options as there are so that you can make a choice if you're happy with it and if i choose to turn the ground you have that option as well you do  and again depending on what you want to do there are what we call burial shells that accommodate different size dogs up to one hundred fifty pounds so you don't call them caskets no they're really not a casket some do come with a and for a family that's going to want to view their pets they may want to use one of those so they may want to bring a blanket and we try to position the pet in a kind manner even though it's a death there's still ways that we can make th t the pet look comfortable and we try to do that and will encourage the family to bring in their toys and their favorite blanket and you know whatever's going to make them feel good and they can put whatever they want in that container and that can be buried with the pet and so there there's there's really no limitation to what we can do our goal is to do what you want us to do so these come these containers coming different sizes they kind of resemble a cache they kind of do they're going to use  actually set up we do we have a little we have an area that we that we set up we play second tenor and you know we've had some ceremonies there been quite special people come out and  they'll have a prayer and maybe bring a clergy person with them might have a glass of wine or champagne it all depends on how you want to celebrate that pet's life that's what we're there to help you do you know we animal lovers think of our pets as our family and there's no question they share our lives on a daily basis we share and it's wonderful that we now have these options because this wasn't done now not that long ago i i remember when my first dog like you you know we buried him in the backyard but part of the problem that we have today in today's most mobile society is get tell the next person that's going to buy your house your dog in their backyard a a little difficult yeah so using a cemetery or having cremations that you can take with you is a better way to do it i think it's good for you because then you know you know exactly where the pet is and if they have cremains you can always go w a few other places a rougher cremation were the only facility that has our own crematory on site which is important and has a cemetery that where you can make a choice whatever comfortable for you so in a cemetery if you wanted to come and visit your pet you have our set aside to do that normal hours for four other human cemetery which is would have memorial park which is adjacent to the pet cemetery those are normally from eight thirty in the morning till sunset which depending on the time of year you know chance at that time but it's it's it's amazing to me how many people come to the pet cemetery and weekly some more often than that some several times a week to remember their pet and just to be there to reminisce and go up maybe say a prayer or whatever they do with their private time we don't interfere and we always keep it looking immaculate and everybody's happy that it looks so all these facilities will except the pats we do but normally we try to schedule most of that now because of how busy we are we try we have a staff that's at the cemetery that's their base and they pretty much function from there is there a separate n people should call there's a separate number i think they have everything on the ground they were going to put it on a graphic there for you but it's peaceful pastures an easy name to remember yes something that you know everybody wants to feel good about where their pet is and  i came up with that name i feel good about it if i like it i hopefully everybody else does you know and it's a very tranquil setting that's you know it's just a wonderful place to remember you is concerned but as far as the cemetery there aren't any state laws but again are our ethics and how we run our business for all these years we wouldn't do it anyway but the right way and that's another thing sure the there's hardly a household out there that doesn't have a pet and they can everybody can feel comfortable even if you have any questions in advance about what cost maybe or a selection you want to pick out a spot that's a that's a very good idea that a lot of people do that yes because a lot of people have more than one pet so you know if you will if you're going to select a grave then you might want to think about the grave for the you know the other pets there some day we're going to lose and we all know that so this way you can secure a spot right