A Day at the Pet Crematorium

The dog, weighing well over 100 pounds, has become stuck to the inside of the freezer. “We’re going to have to let him thaw a little,” says the owner of the pet crematorium, shoving the chest freezer out of the garage into the sunlit parking lot of the office park.

It’s one of the biggest dogs I’ve ever seen, corpulent and distended from overfeeding. His owners showed their affection for him in life with food, a habit that likely contributed to his early demise.

We stand outside the front doors of this pet incineration facility that sits at the end of a stand of pre-fab buildings, smoking cigarettes in the sun, as employees of other businesses in the park drive by in their trucks and nod hello. A sign on the door to the crematorium invites customers to enter the small waiting area decorated with sample urns and snapshots of dogs and their owners. No customers are there today; any pets to be cremated have already been dropped off or picked up from the local shelters and veterinary offices.

The incinerator takes up the entire garage in breadth and width; It’s as big as a moving truck, all square angles and iron levers, like something from a fast-food kitchen. Inside three chambers do their work: a primary chamber receives the bodies of the pets, hitting them with plumes of natural gas-fed flame that can reach up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Two secondary chambers catch the smoke and particulate, swirling it for a couple of seconds to be blasted by afterburners that burn any remaining solid matter and destroy any bacteria or viruses. The remaining gas is routed through a filter and up the flue to be ejected into the sky, mostly carbon dioxide with a small amount of carbon monoxide.

“Everything gets burned,” explains the owner. “People think that muscles and fat turn to dust—ashes to ashes, right?—but the only thing that remains after we burn is bone.” Those bones can still be recognized as, well, bones, so the attendants take the cooled remains from the primary chamber and put them into a pulverizer—sort of a giant food processor—and grind them down to meal, roughly one cubic centimeter’s worth for every pound on the animal.

This same type of incinerator can be used to cremate human bodies with different permits, although there is no place in the United States that allows animals and humans to be cremated in the same furnace. The owner hears nearly endless jokes about disposing of his enemies and creditors.

It’s not a sad place, despite the freezers full of frozen animal bodies staged for future incineration. Pets that are not loved are rarely cremated, instead relegated to less expensive resting places like landfills. Instead a somber, surprisingly respectful attitude pervades. There are the occasional jokes—it’s the sort of ploddingly morbid occupation that lends itself to workplace humor—but the bodies are treated with methodical care, with each cremation occurring individually, despite the fact that the incinerator could handle multiple pets at a time. (This furnace was once used to cremate a small horse.)

Some owners choose to pick up their pet’s remains at the office, receiving the small boxes or urns that contain the milled bones of their loved pets. It’s emotionally sapping for those in the front office; everyone has pets at home.

Customers can have strange requests. Some ask to see their pet being incinerated, partially out of a need for closure and sometimes out of an irrational suspicion that they might receive the wrong remains. A few have brought bodies in many days after their pets have died, unable to part with them until fetid realities force their hands.

I don’t stay to watch the big dog placed in the incinerator, still solid but able to be dislodged from the freezer by three grown men and placed in a staging cooler. Instead, I look in the back as an attendant opens the blast doors on the primary chamber to stir the glowing remains with a metal prod to ensure they burn completely. Little heat escapes through the opening and only the faintest smell of burning; by design, everything stays in furnace, even smoke.

I meet the owner at his house later, who invites me in; a friendly carmel-spotted cat hops on my lap. “That’s Robot,” he says. “I didn’t really want a cat, but one of my people brought him over and we’ve gotten to be pretty good buds.” Someday Robot will pass on and his owner will cremate him, but it seems gauche to ask about the inevitable, especially as Robot nuzzles my cupped hand, very alive and very loved.