This Ritual Life Archive

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Here you will find out about ways to enhance your holiday experience, to celebrate or mark a meaningful life cycle event, and to deepen your experience of the everyday. Our authors are especially interested in hearing your responses to what they have written. So after reading, visit the Ritual Life discussion forum where you can join in conversation with CLAL faculty and other readers.

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Burying a Pet

All life is precious, we are taught, although we live in a world in which life seems so precarious, in which life has been painfully and violently diminished. For many of us, sensitivity to the preciousness of life is first learned in childhood with a puppy or a rabbit, a kitten or hamster. Children learn to be responsible for another life, for its health and care. They learn to love and to give and to be loved in simple, wordless ways. This need not change as one grows older. Medical research tells us that patients recover more quickly and with less pain when returning home to a beloved pet.

When a pet that we nurtured and who nurtured us dies, the loss feels so very real and painful. Finding a loving way to say goodbye to a pet is sensitive way to reaffirm the infinite value of life and of love in our universe.

Meditation:

You blessed our days with love and companionship.

We will never forget you.

Ritual:

Find an appropriate place to bury the pet - in the yard, in the countryside or a place set aside for burying animals. If the pet is small, find an appropriate sized box and place it inside. Children can write letters or draws pictures and place them in or on the box. Find a stone or make a marker for the place where your pet will be buried. If possible, place a candle in the earth and light it. As the burial takes place, everyone should tell stories about the pet, stories that can make everyone laugh or cry. Mark your calendar to remember this anniversary.

Blessing:

Barukh atah she'lo chisar b'olamo davar

Blessed are You in whose world nothing is lacking; it is filled with wonderful animals that bring joy to human beings.

Teaching:

And God made all kinds of animals, wild beasts and animals of every kind, and all kinds of crawling animals that are on the earth. And God saw that this was good. (Genesis 1:25)

But God paid attention to Noah and all the living things, all the animals that were with them in the ark, and God brought a wind across the earth, and the waters abated. (Genesis 8:1)

Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself in which to set her young near your altar, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God. (Psalm 84:4)

(CLAL faculty)

CLAL's National Jewish Resource Center develops and publishes rituals that help to bridge the gap between our contemporary lives and the ancient wisdom of the Jewish tradition.