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Interview Excerpt:

Nancy:  How are the National Death Care Associations, like the NFDA and the ICCFA, how are they responding to this growing niche in death care?

Thomas:  The ICCFA just created a subdivision of its association called the Pet Loss Professionals Alliance, and that's actually headed by Coleen, who I just mentioned.. and Bill Remkus is also helping out with that as well. The NFDA, it has regular sessions, and webinars, and that type of thing about how to get involved in this.

And then CANA, the Cremation Association of North America recently announced a partnership with the International Association of Pet Cemeteries, and they are now going to be working together to try to bring forth this mission to a larger audience and to try to get the word out as to how to best serve pet owners and that kind of thing.

Regardless of what association you're allied with, what group you feel most comfortable working with, the point is, is that there are a number of death care associations getting involved with this. There's a number of resources out there where people can go to for information.

One is not necessarily better than the other, but just find a group that you're comfortable working with and seek them out for information.

Nancy:  Do you see any obstacles or any push‑back to funeral homes for other death care professionals who are serving pets?

Thomas:  There is. There are some funeral homes that really don't want to get involved in this, and that's not necessarily a wrong thing. As I said before, it might be based on your market, on your business, on your community. But some people really feel like it would almost denigrate their existing human business if they were to start serving pets, because they feel like that would be putting pets on a par with people and they feel like that would be a bad thing, that that's not something they really want to promote.

Pet Services Transcript