Dustin Womble was a toddler when his mom found Copper in a
gutter along a busy highway.
Dustin Womble was a toddler when his mom found Copper in a gutter along a busy highway.
The kitten and the child took to each other immediately and, for the next 15 years, shared a special bond. Even as the family grew – three siblings, two dogs and another cat joined the household – Dustin and Copper remained steadfast companions.
So when Copper died unexpectedly in his sleep recently, Dustin, 16, was distraught.
“It was really hard to watch,” said Tami Hubbard, Dustin’s mother. “They were very, very attached to each other.”
Wanting to honor Copper’s life and ease her son’s pain, Hubbard contacted Beyond the
Rainbow, a business that specializes in pet memorial services.
“They came and did a service so everyone could say goodbye,” Hubbard said. “It was very personal. It was just like a funeral. I didn’t even know there was a place that offered pet memorial services.”
Believed to be the first business of its kind in Texas, Beyond the Rainbow offers complete end-of-life care for pets, including in-home hospice, funerals, cremation and burial. The company, owned by licensed funeral directors Kate Moore and Terry Branson, who spent a combined 60 years in the human funeral industry, has veterinarians, chaplains and counselors to help families deal with pet loss.
“The grieving that takes place when a pet dies or when a human in a family dies is exactly the same,” Branson said.
In the not-so-distant past, grieving a sick or dying pet was something owners did privately and quietly, without support or fanfare. The pet usually died naturally or was euthanized in the vet’s office. It was
then taken away or buried in a back yard or maybe a pasture.
Times have changed. These days, with pets in roughly 71 million U.S. households, pet bereavement is big business. Companies sell pet caskets, handcrafted urns, even mausoleums for four-legged friends. Trained pet chaplains deliver sermons at pet funerals. Pet cemeteries and crematoriums are scattered across the country.
And pet hospice – palliative care designed to keep pets pain-free and comfortable in their homes until they die – is becoming a trend.
“The word is getting out,” said Gail Bishop, clinic coordinator for the Argus Institute, the veterinary teaching hospital at Colorado State University. “Pet hospice focuses on caring, not curing. It offers the family additional time to say goodbye. And it allows the animal, if we can keep them comfortable, to die with dignity, just like humans.”
Dr. Kathryn D. Marocchino, president and founder of the Nikki Hospice Foundation for Pets, said people sometimes feel more intensely for their pets than for relatives or friends. “The grief that people feel over the loss of an animal that has given them unconditional love and accepts them for who they are is extraordinarily strong,” she said. “They’ll say, ‘I didn’t cry as much when my sister died’ or ‘I loved this animal more than anyone in my life.’
“There has been a shift in attitudes over the past 10 or 15 years in the way the public at large sees its relationship with pets.”
Copper didn’t get sick; he just got old.
On the morning of Sept. 29, Hubbard woke to find Copper at the foot of her bed.
“I just reached down to pet him, and that is when I noticed he had passed away,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard sent her other children – Billy, 16; Meghan, 6; and Hayley, 8 – to school but allowed Dustin to stay home.
“My mom came and asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to turn him into ashes so I could keep him with me,” Dustin said.
Hubbard said when she called her vet to ask about cremation, she was reminded about Beyond the Rainbow. A few hours later, Moore and Branson arrived to get Copper and prepare him for his funeral.
“Later that evening, about 7, they brought him back so the whole family could say goodbye,” Hubbard said. “They had a little table and a little pillow with him on it. We read some poems and remembered a little bit about Copper. It was nice.”
Branson and Moore know firsthand what it is like to lose a special pet.
In 2002, Branson said, he returned home one day and found that his 12-year-old dachshund, Chelsea, could no longer get up.
“I knew that the time was right to do something to end the pain,” Branson said.
After Chelsea was euthanized, Branson took her body back to his funeral home, bathed her and put her in a baby casket. The next day, he and Moore took her to a pet cemetery, where a chaplain performed a service before a small group of friends.
“It gave me the opportunity to recognize that this relationship was very, very special to me and that I was paying tribute and honor to someone that I loved with all my heart,” Branson said. “I also knew that there needed to be something like that for every other pet owner out there, and there wasn’t.
“So I made the decision that day that when I got out of the human funeral business, I was going to provide the service to people in the Metroplex.”
Branson and Moore said offering pet hospice, in addition to memorial services, just made sense.
“We felt the best way we could serve pet owners was to be able to serve them before the pet died and after, as well,” Branson said.
Dr. Randy Jones of Cityview Animal Hospital in Fort Worth has been providing in-home euthanasia for years so pets can die in the comfort of their homes. And for years, Jones and his staff have been talking about how great it would be to also offer in-home hospice.
“We would say, ‘Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice if we could provide end-of-life care so that they wouldn’t have to come back and forth to the hospital?'” Jones said.
Jones is among several vets in the Metroplex partnering with Beyond the Rainbow to provide medical assistance and pain medication for in-home hospice care. Once Beyond the Rainbow does an initial assessment, Jones or another vet will go to the pet owner’s home to determine whether the animal is ready for hospice. If so, the vet will provide medical support until the animal dies or the decision to euthanize is made.
“Our goal from the medical end is to provide palliative care, pain management and comfort,” Jones said. “These pets are surrounded by people that they know and people that they trust in familiar surroundings. It is just a really nice end-of-life situation for them.”
Anita Westmoreland, a minister who works with Beyond the Rainbow to provide emotional support to families, said people who treat their pets like family should grieve them as such.
“You don’t just say, ‘That is just a dog or a cat,'” she said. “They are part of your life and if you lose one of them, you are going to be a mess if you don’t stop and grieve.”
‘WE WERE BLESSED’
Hubbard is grateful that Copper’s death was not drawn out.
“We didn’t need the hospice care,” she said. “We were one of the lucky few that we woke up and the kitty passed away in his sleep. We were blessed.”
During Copper’s memorial service, Moore and Branson dimmed the lights and set up candles in the living room. The children gathered around Copper, stroked his fur and tearfully told him goodbye.
Moore read a poem called “Rainbow Bridge” about a beautiful place that connects heaven and Earth where pets and their owners will one day reunite.
A few days after Copper’s service, Moore and Branson went by the family’s house and gave Dustin a clipping of Copper’s fur and a ceramic mold of his paw. They also gave him a copy of the poem and a small wooden box that contained Copper’s ashes.
Hubbard and her husband, Ryan, who paid about $110 for the funeral and cremation, said memorializing Copper helped Dustin and the other children deal with his death.
“They were able to mourn,” Ryan Hubbard said. “Everybody got to say their piece and pet him goodbye. It was a good healing process – and we shared it together.”
