Pet Memorials from the Heart Blog

If you have lost a pet, the popular national publication USA Today invites you to memorialize your pet—on its website.

Unbeknownst to many, the USA Today website has been offering this service for free since April 2009. It is part of the “Community” section of the site, and participants must sign up for a free membership in the USA Today community. Community members may then upload a photo of their deceased pet and write a tribute to accompany it.  Since they opened this special gallery, USA Today has seen hundreds of pet owners post memorials about their special friends.

To memorialize your pet at USA Today, simply go to the special gallery they’ve set up. If you are not yet a member of the community, you can sign up for free on the upper right side of the page where it says “Become a Member.” Once you’ve set up your account, you can upload your pet’s photo, write something special about your pet, and submit it.  Of course, content you submit will be screened by USA Today to make sure it’s appropriate and relevant to the gallery.

Why memorialize your pet in this way? Simply put, remembering you pet in a tangible way is part of the healing process.  Not only does it help you get through it, but when you share about your special friend through words and photos, it can help others who may be going through the same thing.  Perhaps most importantly, sharing a photo and pet tribute online is just one more way of publicly saying, “My friend lived, my friend was here for a time, and my friend made a difference in my life.”

Of course, there are more substantial ways to memorialize your pet, and that’s why the Loving Hearts Tribute Series exists. But posting about your pet on USA Today and other places is a free and easy way to share the story of you and your pet with others.

A former Vice President for Monster.com apparently understands the need to provide support when people lose a pet—because he’s launched a new website specifically designed for pet memorial.

The website, named Petrib.com, was founded by Sam Tharp, who was at one time the Vice President of ecommerce for the popular online job board Monster.com. The website is currently still in Beta, but allows visitors to post tributes to their pets, connect and talk with others in a forum setting, and even find local resources to help plan a pet funeral—all for free.  The tribute section even allows members to post pictures of their pets along with written tributes–and tributes are welcomed for any type of pet, whether a dog, cat, hamster, fish, bird, gerbil or iguana. Tharp writes in the “About” section of the site: “I launched Petrib in 2010 to help people mourn, grieve and hopefully better deal with the loss of a beloved pet.”

While anyone can view the different areas of the website, posting a pet tribute or a forum entry requires you to sign up for an account.  However, there is no charge to sign up or to use the services offered.

Besides the helpful and comforting resources on the site itself, the fact that a former corporate executive has seen fit to launch a pet memorial website is an indicator that more and more people are seeing the value of pet memorials, and the need to provide support and comfort to the bereaved.

Those who have lost a pet know that the grief can be just as intense as losing a human friend or relative—and for that reason the memorializing a pet is just as legitimate as having a funeral or memorial service for a relative. We are greatly encouraged to know more sites like Petrib.com are being established, and more resources are being made available to help people who have lost a beloved pet.  Kudos to Sam Tharp for his passion and sensitivity.