Eight strange and poignant images of pet cemeteries

A new photo book explores the practices of memorializing beloved animals, from Las Vegas performing elephants to service animals and the world’s most loyal sheepdog.

Paul Koudounaris’ first visit Pet Haven Cemetery and Crematorium Speaking to the BBC in Gardena, California, the American author, photographer and expert on macabre art history was surprised to find his eyes moist with tears. “I’d written three books about death and nothing had really moved me, and then after five hours with that little tomb, it finally hit me,” he told the BBC. “The emotion there was overwhelming.”

Faithful Till Death – Pet Cemeteries, Animal Graves, and Eternal DevotionCultural Practices of Memorializing Animals, due to be published this month by Thames & Hudson, is the culmination of Koudounaris’ 11-year exploration of the cultural practices of memorializing animals, from the lantern-lit, hand-painted pet portraits in a forest cemetery in Helsinki to the ornate granite-and-bronze mausoleums in New York and Boston.

The gravestones Koudounaris has found commemorate the deaths of animals. Some rest beneath giants, like Stoney the elephant, a regular performer at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas in the 1990s. Others pay tribute to smaller companions, like Johnny the snail, who befriended a man whose garden he frequented in Echo Park, Los Angeles. “This shows that humans can form bonds with any animal,” Koudounaris says.

Humans have been paying tribute to pet animals for millennia. Ancient Egyptians built animal cemeteries and mummified their non-human friends to live with them in the afterlife. But pet cemeteries as we know them today began in England and were born out of the Industrial Revolution, Koudounaris says. “Only in the 19th century did more people live in cities than in the countryside, bringing with it a preference for keeping animals,” he explains. Cremation was opposed by the church, and a stigma that persists to this day meant that burying animals in human cemeteries was prohibited. The first urban animal cemetery, established in London’s Hyde Park in 1881, was an answer to the problem of how to dispose of a growing pet population in a place with little private land.

The craze took off on the continent in 1899, when Parisians, tired of dumping dead dogs into the Seine, opened the gates to swirling Art Nouveau. Dog CemeteryAs the 21st century dawned, the concept gradually spread worldwide. Today, the most common adopters are Americans, with canine heroes recognized as far away as Guam and Micronesia. Koudounaris says service animals are the “most respected” animals, and their graves are “always the best cared for.” One such grave at Ilford Animal Cemetery in East London commemorates Mary of Exeter, a pigeon who carried messages across the English Channel in World War II, a route that only one in 10 survives. She was ambushed by specially trained German raptors and shot all over her body with shotgun bullets, but stitched up and fitted with a neck brace, Mary survived against all odds, completing mission after mission.

in Wat Khlong Toei NaiAt a Buddhist temple in Bangkok, owners can decorate their dead pets with flowers, then board a boat to send their cremated remains down the river. “One of the things that Western culture lacks is a ritual of closure,” says Koudounaris, who, in her work as a pet grief counselor, has seen many people feel guilty or ashamed about the length and depth of their bereavement. “So I think it’s a lot easier in a culture that believes in reincarnation and soul transference, where there’s no such hierarchy or taboo,” she says. “You might be reborn as a butterfly or a cat or a human, so there’s no such hierarchy.”

Sometimes it’s not a story of owners mourning their pets, but of pets mourning their owners. That’s the case with Shep, a German Shepherd-Collie mix. For six years, Shep waited expectantly on the platform of Fort Benton, Montana, hoping that his late owner would one day return. His owner’s casket was loaded onto an eastbound train in 1936. The faithful dog became a local celebrity, but he refused the hospitality of well-meaning residents, preferring to hold vigils at the station. In 1942, deaf and weak, Shep slipped into the path of a train. To ease their grief and remember this most faithful of pets, local residents buried Shep on the bluffs overlooking the station, inscribed his name in bold yellow letters, and painted a silhouette of Shep watching over the platform for all eternity.

It is probably Los Angeles Pet Memorial ParkFounded in 1928, this cemetery is the one that has most broadened the scope of what we think of as pets. In this city where Koudounaris writes, “weirdness is common when it comes to animal burials,” many of the dead were faithful friends of Hollywood actors and stars. Mae West’s monkey, Boogie, is buried here, as is Hopalong Cassidy’s faithful horse, Topper. Among them is Tawny (1918-40), the lion who roars at the beginning of MGM movies and was a regular in Tarzan films. Owner Mary MacMillan rescued Tawny from the circus when he was a kitten and doted on him. Neighbors were less keen, waking her up in the middle of the night with his intense barking. When stray tomcat Cinderella joined the family, the two cats must have realized they were of the same bloodline. Though vastly different in size, they became inseparable. So it’s fitting that they now share a single grave.

The Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park’s tolerance for eccentricity was truly tested in 1978, when conceptual artist Jeffrey Vallance came to request the burial of Blinky, a headless Foster Farms fried chicken he’d bought in the freezer section of his local supermarket. Cemetery officials were expecting a pet chicken with feathers, so this hairless lump of meat must have raised more than a few eyebrows. Whether it was a piece of performance art or a prank aimed at poking fun at the cemetery, the act raised important questions about cultural norms that lead us to cherish some animals while viewing others only as food.

In the early 1990s, as animal rights awareness grew and activists infiltrated pet cemeteries, Vallance’s avant-garde art was replaced by strong, clear-cut inscriptions. Aspin Hill Memorial Park, a six-acre pet cemetery in Maryland, USA, features a monument topped by a plump rodent holding its tail in its mouth, dedicated to “the millions of rats used in medical experiments and product testing.” Elsewhere in the cemetery, a grave full of sable furs with an inscription reading “Products of Man’s Ignorance and Vanity” once again stirs our conscience.

Koudounaris writes that they are unmarked, scattered in remote locations such as the deserts of South America and the American West, “with ample public land” and “few prying eyes.” The homemade animal cemeteries, which are also untethered from electricity, are perhaps the most moving. Most of the graves are simply marked by painted stones or makeshift wooden crosses, but some have letterboxes where owners leave letters for the deceased. With no centralized management or maintenance, “the graves have a lifespan of their own,” Koudounaris says. “You watch them grow and wither.” Whether painted slabs or life-size marble sculptures, “what started in England will eventually exist in different forms around the world,” Koudounaris says. “But they’re all dedicated to the same thing: the idea that animals that were loved in life deserve a dignified end.”