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From service dogs and emotional support animals to pets waiting to greet their owner at the front door, animals can bring support, comfort, and companionship. Naturally, the relationships people form with animals during their lives would continue – or at least be commemorated – in death. Burying, embalming, or cremating animals are hardly new practices. These funerary rites offer ways to celebrate that animal and honour their life and the meaning brought to the world. But what happens when pets outlive their owners? As this paper explores, animals are more frequently being mentioned in the obituaries of their human companions.
Honouring the Dead
Writing an obituary is one of the many practices people conduct when a loved one dies. Formerly reserved for only elite members of society (Starck 2006), a “democratization” of the obituary has resulted in more people being memorialized through these texts (Fowler 2007). This has led to an increase in the number of obituaries that are published, as well as innovations in how people compose death notices.
Transformations in this genre reflect the fact that people write obituaries for many purposes. Some of these are purely practical, such as announcing that someone died and indicating when/where a funeral will happen. Perhaps more importantly, obituaries give the bereaved an opportunity to share the deceased’s life narrative, and in that way, honour their memory. Who was this person? What did they enjoy? What were their values? As one of the studies conducted within the Nonreligion in a Complex Future project, our team has analyzed thousands of Canadian obituaries over the last century to understand transformations in how people commemorate the dead. One important change is the gradual appearance of animals over time.
The Data
This paper is based on two separate datasets. The first consists of 3,300 obituaries published between 1900 and 2021. Incorporating six publications from across Canada, researchers analyzed the first five obituaries to appear in a newspaper on a given day each year. The second dataset consists of over 3,200 obituaries, published between 1980 and 2023. This sample includes every obituary published in a Toronto newspaper on a given Saturday each year. The first dataset helps contextualize broad trends in the shifting ways by which people compose these texts and remember loved ones. The second dataset provides a more in-depth focus on a relatively recent phenomenon, and offers a deeper understanding of how people incorporate animals.
To briefly summarize the key findings, one major change is that obituaries have progressively grown longer. In the early 1900s, the average obituary was roughly 4-10 lines long. These notices offered enough space to list the deceased’s name, age, where they died, and perhaps list some family members. As obituaries grew longer, this offered space to share further details about someone’s life, such as their education, occupation, groups they belonged to, or activities they enjoyed. In recent years, the mean length of obituaries is roughly 40 lines, and obituaries that are 100 lines long are not uncommon. These obituaries become rich, detailed life narratives. Reflecting people’s diverse interests and priorities, it is unsurprising that animals have become a greater focus of some obituaries.
As recently as 1990, not a single one of fifty-three obituaries published on a given day mentioned animals. Throughout the decade, animals were only mentioned in less than 1% of all obituaries each year. In the early 2000s, their presence grew slightly, mentioned in 2-3% of notices. In recent years, this frequency has grown to between 10-15%. While these numbers are hardly overwhelming, this upward trend speaks to changes in both how people view animals and how people mark the passage of death.
Looking closely at how animals are described reveals multiple ways in which human-animal relationships are perceived. In some cases, animals relate to one’s job, whether they were a farmer or they judged dog shows. Such people value animals, but do so in a professional capacity. Similarly, some obituaries encourage donations to a humane society in the deceased’s honour. This attempts to impact the lives of animals and other pet-lovers, but somewhat indirectly. Some obituaries describe important, but less familiar relationships with animals. People fed squirrels, went bird watching, or pursued other activities of which animals – and nature more broadly – were a part. Finally, many obituaries describe close, social bonds with animals, who are named alongside the family one leaves behind. Though each of these describes slightly different understandings of animals and their role in human life, their inclusion alone speaks to the perceived importance of human-animal relationships.
Changing Practices and Values
This paper hopes to build on important research in the areas of death studies and animal studies. Recognizing that obituaries offer a window into societal values, as well as how a given society understands death, scholars have explored how a range of topics surface in these texts, including sports fandom, career achievements, or people who suffer from addiction (End et al. 2009; Campbell et al. 2021; Heynderickx and Dieltjens 2016; Cole and Carmon 2019). The growing inclusion of animals reinforces the broader trend which sees obituaries becoming more intimate and personal. This paper highlights significant changes in how people see fit to honour the dead, and also the priorities and values of the bereaved and broader society.
This paper also hopes to build on conversations in the area of animal studies. Much has been written on the benefits that humans derive from bonding with animals, or even being in nature (Friedmann and Son 2009; Wells 2019; McConnell, Lloyd, and Humphrey 2019; Beaman 2017; Beaman and Strumos 2023). Studies also demonstrate the depth of human-animal relationships by exploring the ways in which people try to cope with pet loss (DeMello 2016; Wilson et al. 2015; Montgomery, Lian, and Lloyd 2024). By exploring the ways in which people honour relationships with animals when commemorating the death of a human, this paper hopes to deepen understanding of the bonds that people form with the natural world and with other than human animals.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
Animals and humans have complex, deep, and meaningful relationships. Throughout history, people have commemorated animals with whom they were close through various mortuary practices. But what about when the human or owner dies first? Based on analysis of Canadian obituaries, this paper explores the ways that people commemorate human-animal relationships. Though hardly ever showing up prior to the 1990s, the last thirty years have seen a gradual rise in obituaries that mention these bonds. Animals appear in these texts in various ways, from people who fed birds in their backyard and lived/worked on farms, to pets who are listed alongside surviving family members. These examples point to different types of relationships, and different understandings of the bonds people form with animals. Overall however, the simple inclusion of other-than-human animals speaks to the perceived importance of these relationships as well as transformations in how people memorialize loved ones.