The Pet Angel
Puchrin Shimohira on helping people bid a bearable goodbye to their animals,
- Published: 29/05/2010 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Muse
If Puchrin Shimohira was to look back on her career some day in the future, she would certainly recall an innumerable series of scenes of cold, lifeless bodies, floods of tears and inconsolable sobbing.
"There was this one customer who, after bringing her dog here, said, 'His body is still warm, can I just hold him like this for a while?' as she was still holding the dead body of her beloved dog in her arms like she had been the whole afternoon," Puchrin said, to share one of her most memorable moments.
As the founder of World Pet Angel (WPA), one of Thailand's first animal care homes to offer funeral services for pets, Puchrin has over the past eight years been a witness to thousands of parting moments between man and his best friend.
Launched eight years ago as a full-cycle clinic for pets, with hotel, spa treatment, swimming pool, as well as grooming and funeral services, WPA received much attention from both the local and regional media. Puchrin, however, admits it is extremely difficult keeping up with the high ambition set and regrets going big right from the start.
"The land we had was quite big and I felt like I wanted to make it into a one-stop venue for pets. I wanted to have everything that Thailand never had before right here. However, if you can maintain your high standards that's great, but now I feel as though I should have started out with only a funeral service," she said with a laugh.
In fact, funeral services have always been the core business and the true motivation behind the establishment of WPA since the very beginning.
Having spent many years in Japan, where people regard pets as family members and treat them with love and respect, even when dead, Puchrin discovered the potential for pet cremation and other pet-related services such as grooming and onsen (hot spring) upon returning to Thailand. She invested over a million baht in building the environmentally-friendly, smoke-free crematorium that cremates carcasses at over 1,000C.
Puchrin said that she was fortunate to have started the business at a very good time. Back then, Bangkok suffered a great flood, which posed trouble for many Thais since they usually buried their deceased pets. Also, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration in charge of issuing certificates for those operating cremation services, saw the significance of having such as a place where the dead bodies of animals could be handled properly, and therefore gave her the green light.
"I talked to many people about how they handled the bodies of dead pets as part of my market research. Many of them had initially insisted on only burying their pets on their private property, but later on some started to consider this cremation option following discussions about uncontrollable circumstances like storms or pets dying with suspicious transmittable diseases," she said.
"Burying dead bodies is not always the best option, especially when you don't know how to do it properly. If the grave isn't deep enough, other animals can dig up the bodies and eat them. Moreover, if a pet dies from a transmittable disease, chances are the animals eating the carcasses will also be infected with the disease and spread it, too."
It would, however, be a bit too disrespectful for man's best friend to simply be dumped into a furnace. WPA's main highlight is its special complete funeral service with a religious ceremony upon receiving the ashes. Pet owners can choose to take the ashes back home or leave them with WPA, and on the 100th day they will be asked to perform a merit-making ceremony for the pet and scatter the ashes over water, which is believed to allow the deceased to be reborn.
From her experiences with countless customers, Puchrin believes the funeral service gives pet lovers a chance to bid a proper goodbye to their beloved pet, making the parting process more bearable.
"People in a Buddhist society are more used to cremations and so burying a pet isn't emotionally fulfilling, especially if the pet dies from an accident. They still feel that the body is there somehow. And so the act of scattering the ashes makes them feel like their pet has really left ... and gone on to a new life. And then you have done your best for him or her in this life."
Although WPA's other services remain relatively active - whether the swimming pool for leisure or physiotherapy, hotel accommodations or grooming - Puchrin said she's actually focusing on only cremation and is scaling down her business. The reason, she said, is because it's difficult to find adequate and capable staff to tend to all the services offered, especially the hotel where problems can occur at any time despite precautionary measures taken.
"There was one time when a customer's dog had died. And although I had already implemented several measures and regulations stating that every dog should be checked every hour, it was still quite difficult for the staff to enforce them practically. Dogs can't talk and if it's not the ones we keep here, then it's even more difficult to tell what's going on in its mind," she said.
"So we'll then just stick to what we know we do best, and just be happy about doing things that are not too troubling."
About the author
- Writer: Samila Wenin
- Position: Muse Editor
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