People mourning the loss of a dog, cat or other animal friend are invited to attend a pet memorial service 6 p.m. Tuesday at Pinnacle View United Methodist Church, 20100 Cantrell Road, in Little Rock.
The event, which is co-sponsored by Out West Veterinary Urgent Care, will be a “time of remembrance and healing,” organizers say.
World Pet Memorial Day is held on the second Tuesday of June and has been celebrated, in one form or another, for more than two decades.
This is the first time Pinnacle View UMC has held a pet memorial service.
The church also has a therapy dog-training program and provides prayer blankets for new or ailing animals.
Gayle Fiser, the congregation’s pet ministry coordinator, said she believes Tuesday’s gathering will be beneficial.
“We’re hoping that this will be very healing to those who have lost a pet,” she said.
“We know statistically 70% of all U.S. households have at least one pet, and 95% of all Americans consider their pets as family,” Fiser said, citing figures from the American Pet Products Association and the Harris Poll.
Weather allowing, the event will be held at a peaceful spot on the church grounds.
There’ll be music and prayer and brief comments.
“We’re asking people to bring pictures of their pets and we’re going to put them on a pet memory table,” Fiser said.
Later, there’ll be fellowship and sugar cookies. Rather than being decorated with the denomination’s logo — a cross and flame — they will feature a cross and paw print, Fiser said.
When Stephanie Dungey, practice manager at Out West Veterinary Urgent Care, inquired about holding some sort of pet memorial observance, “We jumped right in,” Fiser said.
The United Methodist Church included an official “Service for the Blessing of the Animals” in its 1992 Book of Worship. It’s a practice Pinnacle View’s pastor, the Rev. Betsy Singleton Snyder, immediately embraced and one she continues each year, typically in October, more than three decades later.
Arkansas ranks seventh in the nation for pet ownership and third in the nation for percentage of households with dogs, according to a 2016 American Veterinary Medical Association survey.
“We have so many people who have pets in their homes,” Singleton Snyder said.
Organizers are gauging interest in the memorial service, and aren’t sure what size crowd to expect.
“We’re going to see how it all plays out,” she said. “We’re thinking that maybe this is one of those things that … is so meaningful to people that we will hold it annually.”
Dungey understands the attachments people have to their animal friends.
“Many of us don’t have kids,” she said. “My pets are my significant others — my loved ones.”
She hopes the memorial service will be a source of comfort.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work with just hundreds of families over the past year who have been deeply impacted by a death of a pet, so I just wanted us to have an opportunity to offer those families a moment to come together and to honor and celebrate their passed-on loved ones,” she said.