A look into the little-known world of pet cremation

Ever wondered what it's like to run a pet cemetery and crematorium?

Stephen King's classic horror novel gave us one perspective, but Sudbury residentSherry Britton can give us a factual account. She runs Memory Gardens, apet cemetery and crematorium, that helps people from Sudbury to Timmins lay their pets to rest.

"It's not a job that people really go looking for. It's kind of a job that falls in your lap," she said.

"It's different. It's exciting at times. You see a lot of very interesting things and interesting people."

Obviously the work can be quite sad.

"You're dealing with the loss ofbeloved family members. Even though they're pets, but they're still family. So there's a lot of grief involved, a lot of sad stories. But we help give those people peace, knowing that we take such good care of their pets."

Every week the business picks up deceased pets at clinics in Sudbury and surrounding areas about 14 stops.

"We have acommunal cremation, where owners do not want ashes back. Those ashes get buried in our garden, we call it, or cemetery, I guess.That's a big cremation. That could be about 30 pets. That takes about half a day."

As the week goes on, Britton says they tend to do smaller, more privatecremations, where owners have the ashes returned to them in a little urn.

"We do get a lot of walk-inclients as well.So people that had their pets at home, they will bring their pets directly to us," she said.

The business sometimescremates up to100 pets in a week.

"And that's just in our area. So you could imagine, even Canada-wide, how many pets are being cremated a day? The numbers are pretty big, so it's busy."

Britton says the cremation process for petsis the same process that's done for people. And it starts with putting the body in an incinerator. Many people assume the body instantly turns into ashes, but that's not the case, she says.

"It is actually still bone material that is there. So we extract the bone material, which kind of goes down a little chute into a bucket and we take that bucket and we pour it on top of a processor ... essentially kind of a giant blender," she said.

"We sift through the bones and we pick out any metals that may be there."

Like rocks (because pets eat a lot of rocks) and metal plates fromsurgeries.

"They have metal plates in their legs or hips. So that all gets taken out," Britton says.

"And then we sweep all the bones into the pot and grind it up and then it's turned into ash. Weput it in a baggie in an urn of choice orbury [the ash] in the cemetery."

In the four years Britton has been working at the crematorium, she says business has risen.

"People travel from quite far to come to us. There's not many crematoriums around or they work with their clinics and we actually pick up, orthey have them delivered to us," she said.

"But the numbers have increased significantly, I would say, especially in the winter months, because you cannot bury your pets in the winter. The ground is frozen. So cremation is much more busy during those seasons."

Listen to more of Britton's story here.