We have spoken before about how keeping a diary or scrapbook of your memories can be very helpful in easing the transition from raw grief to some kind of acceptance. Such treasure troves of happier times can also provide great comfort when revisited in the months and years ahead, either on anniversaries or just when the need arises.

There are lots of ways you can record these special memories, and in this week’s blog we take a look at some ideas for memorialising your pet in words and pictures, rather than through physical markers such as stones and plaques.

Memory books

Scrapbooks and photo albums are widely available and come in all shapes and sizes, to suit all budgets. You can also make your own by collecting certificates, pictures and leaflets from favourite spots you may have visited together and storing them in a memory box or folder, or sticking into a diary or notebook.

Online remembrance pages

Many veterinary practices have a page on their websites dedicated to posts from clients who have lost much-loved pets. Check with your practice how you can upload images and words if so. You may also wish to create your own website in honour of your pet(s) – companies such as WordPress  offer lots of templates to help you design a website for free, with hosting then typically costing just a few pounds per month.

The Ralph Site memorials

Our parent site, The Ralph Site, holds hundreds of memorials, with more being added every day. It’s free to add your own detailed entry, all you need to do is register with your name and email address (we promise that the information you provide is secure and confidential and will not be shared with any third party). Alternatively you can choose to register using your Facebook details.

Please be aware that on the first three anniversaries of your pet’s passing we may choose to feature your pet in our ‘on this day we especially remember’ Facebook post. Many pet carers have found the community support received when these anniversary posts are shared to be very comforting.

Facebook group

You might like to create a private memorial group for friends and family to share their memories and emotions:

•  Click the option ‘Create Group’ beneath ‘Groups’ in the left sidebar of your Facebook page
• A popup window will appear, where you can name your group and add any members you want. You can also set privacy settings here.
• Click the ‘Create’ button

You can also post on The Ralph Site’s open-access Facebook page  or join our members-only closed group by visiting this link and leaving a request to join.

However you choose to memorialise your pet, whether publically or privately, online or on paper, you’ll be taking positive steps along the healing journey. We wish you well.

Until next time, best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support 

Please note: The Ralph Site is not affiliated with the third-party organisations in any of the links shared here, and the views, ideas and suggestions expressed in this and other blogs are simply shared with the intention of helping you, our friends, take care of the special animals in your lives.

With 800,000 pet rabbits in the UK, it’s safe to say that many of The Ralph Site’s  friends will share their lives with a lagomorph (rabbits belong to the family Leporidae, of the order Lagomorph).

Today there is a wider understanding of the needs of pet rabbits, and the days of lone rabbits being kept in small hutches are hopefully mostly gone – now a huge range of hutches and runs are available to ensure that there’s always a home to suit your rabbits. We thought it would be useful to remind our readers of the basic requirements when choosing homes for rabbits:

• Rabbits are naturally sociable animals and should not be routinely housed alone. Neutered, male-female pairs are best.
• Did you know that rabbits are ‘crepescular’ (most active at dusk and dawn) – traditionally the times when they are locked up for the night. Ideally your rabbits should have a large, safe enclosure where they can explore at these times.
•  Your rabbits should spend at least an hour each day out of the hutch, but aim for more if you can.
•  The hutch should be at least large enough to allow your rabbits to stretch up, lie flat out and hop around.
• Place the hutch in a draught free spot that’s dry, away from predators and sheltered from extreme weather.
• The hutch should be lifted off the ground to keep other creatures out of the way.
• Check that catches and locks are sturdy enough to withstand the attention of visiting predators.
• Provide a darkened area for your rabbits to hide in.
•  It is totally natural for rabbits to dig, so why not create a soil pile in the run for them to enjoy re-shaping?!

There’s lots more information on the housing and welfare requirements of pet rabbits here.

Hamsters, gerbils and mice are also very popular indoor pets, and they too have specific housing requirements. Here’s a reminder of some of the key points to remember:

• Buy the largest cage you can – your pet will appreciate the space!
• The cage should be comfortable, dry and draught-free, placed in a quiet spot.
•  If at all possible, place your pet’s cage in a room where the lights go off at roughly the same time each night.
•  Rodents are very sensitive to high frequency sounds that we cannot hear and thus living next to television sets, computer screens, vacuum cleaners or sources of running water can cause stress.
•  Choose appropriate bedding and nesting material, avoiding those that can separate into thin strands (cotton wool) as your pet may get caught up in the fibres or suffer with internal problems if they are digested.
•  Naturally rodents live in deep burrows – provide enough depth of wood shavings and / or shredded paper for your pet to dig and burrow into.
• Cages with tunnels and tubes will help replicate the natural environment and keep your pet stimulated and well exercised.

More information can be found here.

Until next time, best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

Please note: The Ralph Site is not affiliated with the third-party organisations in any of the links shared here, and the views, ideas and suggestions expressed in this and other blogs are simply shared with the intention of helping you, our friends, take care of the special animals in your lives.

As The Ralph Site has evolved, one of the things that we’re most proud of is the sense of community that exists amongst our friends. Anyone who has experienced the pain of losing a pet will naturally empathise with those currently going through equally dark days, just as those slowly adjusting to a new kind of ‘normal’ understand the wide range of emotions that shape each day.

The Ralph Site exists to provide support to all those who have lost, or who are preparing for the loss, of a beloved companion. We do this in two ways:

• The main site www.theralphsite.com features a huge amount of practical advice for carers at every stage of the grieving process. It also hosts a number of members-only forums and provides a caring and sensitive space for memorials to be posted. (You must be registered in order to post on the site, and you can do that for free here)
•  Our public Facebook page allows individual stories to be shared, bringing together anyone who has lost a much-loved pet.

You might like to know that we have also created a private Facebook support group to complement our main Facebook page. This group currently has nearly 1,400 members, so by joining you’ll be able to communicate directly with people who can share a wide range of experiences and coping techniques. As you may be aware, Facebook groups work differently to pages – allowing members who may be struggling to create on-going supportive links with others in the group. Notifications alert members when others have posted or commented, developing a mutually beneficial support network to help with the heartache of pet loss.

Our experience is that some people may be reluctant to fully share how they feel about their pets on an open public page, and therefore we have created the closed group to be private.
If you would like to join the group, all you need to do is click here and leave a request to join.

And if you aren’t already Facebook friends with us, why not join the 41,800+ others who have ‘liked’ our page? As well as featuring daily memorials, we also post news and items of interest to pet carers, regularly sharing inspirational quotes and heart warming pet pictures and encouraging friends to do the same.
Because after all, a problem shared is a problem halved.

Until next time, best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

Please note: The Ralph Site is not affiliated with the third-party organisations in any of the links shared here, and the views, ideas and suggestions expressed in this and other blogs are simply shared with the intention of helping you, our friends, take care of the special animals in your lives.

This time we take a look at some of our furred, feathered and scaly friends who have been making the headlines in recent weeks:

Hello Dolly!

Dolly the sheep hit the headlines back in 1996 when she was introduced to the world as the first animal to be cloned. When she began to age prematurely and developed osteoarthritis, it seemed that the already-controversial cloning process might have hit serious problems. Sadly Dolly died aged six and a half, but recently scientists at the University of Nottingham announced that four of her siblings (Debbie, Denise, Dianna and Daisy) have now reached the ripe old age of nine and are living happy and healthy lives with an outdoor herd.
‘The Nottingham Dollies’ will continue to be monitored closely in order to inform future learning for genetic science.

Feline traveller reunited with his owner after crossing the Irish Sea

When an animal rescue centre in the Speke area of Liverpool took in an adorable grey and white cat found scavenging for food outside a takeaway restaurant, the staff quickly named him Danny Boy. After scanning him for evidence of a microchip, they were astonished to find him registered to an address in Northern Ireland, 260 miles away on the other side of the Irish Sea!

Four-year-old Danny (whose rather fabulous real name is Sapeurs Pompier) was bottle-fed by his owner Julie after being abandoned as a kitten. Local searches proved fruitless when he went missing eighteen months ago and whilst nobody knows how he ended up in Liverpool, everybody was very glad that he did! And it just goes to show how important it is to ensure that pets are microchipped!

Beast of Bodmin finally unveiled?

For decades now rumours have swirled around the West Country of a mysterious large cat roaming Bodmin Moor. A number of sightings have been reported over the years but no proof has ever been found of the animal’s existence. Now reports have come to light that legendary circus owner Mary Chipperfield may have released three pumas into the wild in the late 70s.
Danny Bamping, founder of the British Big Cats Society, told The Mirror: “When Dartmoor Zoo was shut down, Mary agreed to transfer her five pumas to Dartmoor Wildlife Park. When they arrived, there were only two pumas in the consignment, but five tags in the cage. Mary Chipperfield said that she had broken down and that somehow three of the pumas had escaped. We think she let them out on the moor.”
We think the mystery may now be solved! Or, maybe not!

Until next time, best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

Please note: The Ralph Site is not affiliated with the third-party organisations in any of the links shared here, and the views, ideas and suggestions expressed in this and other blogs are simply shared with the intention of helping you, our friends, take care of the special animals in your lives.

As we all know only too well, losing a loved one is unbearably hard.

Over time, the shattered fragments of ‘normal life’ do begin to rearrange themselves into a new kind of ‘normal’ – not quite the same as before, but forming some semblance of a state of living once more, rather than simply existing. How long this takes, and in what new form life begins to shape itself will be different for everyone, but just as surely as the healing will begin, there will also be days when the grief hits you hard all over again.

It might strike out of the blue – a sudden realisation that your beloved companion will not return – or it may accompany a chance sighting, a reignited memory triggered by the sight of a flower that perfectly matches the collar your pet was buried with, or finding a forgotten toy under the sofa, months later. Then of course there are those special dates – birthdays, anniversaries of passing, the first Christmas or holiday without your pet.

People will tell you that these milestone days are the hardest – each a stark reminder that someone who was so special is no longer present. And whilst it’s certainly true that on such occasions your loss will be keenly felt, preparing for and marking a key date can sometimes make it easier to cope; providing some kind of structure to your grief, if only for one day. Giving yourself permission to be sad, and signalling to others that they need to pay extra attention to your feelings on such days can actually make these milestones serve a positive purpose, where before they were met with dreaded anticipation.

On the other hand for some people, heaping all the anger and sadness onto one day fails to acknowledge the pain felt every other day. There may also be times when you’re feeling strong and able to cope with those milestone dates, which can then lead to feelings of guilt that you weren’t sad enough, or of frustration when others around you assume that you must be ‘healed’ now because you coped so well on such a difficult day.

In all honesty there is no timetable for grief, as we’ve discussed before. There will always be good days and bad days, and sometimes the bad days can be predicted when they coincide with birthdays and anniversaries but sometimes they will loom large out of nowhere. The only constant is that there will be bad days, and they will decrease in number and intensity over time (although how long this time will be is impossible to say.)

How you cope with the birthdays and special days is entirely personal to you, and may be different from one year to the next. If you’re feeling strong, taking a walk along the routes you explored with your canine companion can bring back happy memories and reconnect you with people and routines that you may not have experienced since your pet’s passing. Not quite closing the book, but at least opening a new chapter. Or you might wish to donate a present in your pet’s name to a rescue centre, or bake a cake and blow out candles in his or her memory.

Do whatever helps and ignore what doesn’t.
Don’t feel compelled to be or do things a certain way, especially on these milestone days.
This is your grief – dealing with it in your own way and in your own time is the only sure way to find your peace.

Until next time, best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

Please note: The Ralph Site is not affiliated with the third-party organisations in any of the links shared here, and the views, ideas and suggestions expressed in this and other blogs are simply shared with the intention of helping you, our friends, take care of the special animals in your lives.