How to Write a Pet Eulogy

“Max wasn't just a dog — he was the heartbeat of our home. For twelve years he met us at the door like we'd been gone a lifetime, even if we'd only stepped out for the mail. He taught our kids about loyalty and taught us about patience. We were so lucky to be his people.”

“Whiskers ran this house and we were merely her staff. She demanded the sunniest windowsill, the warmest lap, and dinner precisely on time. Beneath all that attitude was the gentlest soul, who somehow always knew which of us needed her most. Sixteen years were not nearly enough.”

Almost everyone begins a eulogy by trying to summarise a whole life, gets three lines in, deletes it, and concludes they cannot write. The problem is the starting point, not the ability. Nobody can open with a summary.

Start with one thing that happened instead. Not what they meant to you — what they did. "She met me at the door for eleven years, including the day she could barely stand." Once one concrete sentence exists on the page, the rest tends to follow, because you are no longer writing about a concept.

If you are stuck, answer these out loud and write down what you actually said: what was the first thing you noticed about them, what did they do that made you laugh, what is the sound you miss, and what was the last ordinary good day like. Spoken answers are always better than written first drafts, because the voice does not reach for the greetings-card phrase.

Two or three minutes read aloud is roughly three hundred words, and that is enough. Four movements cover it: how they arrived, who they turned out to be, one story told properly, and what you want to say to them now.

Give the one story real detail and let the rest be brief. A eulogy that lists ten anecdotes in a sentence each leaves nothing behind; one that tells a single afternoon properly is the one people quote back to you afterwards.

It is fine to be funny. Most animals were funny, and a eulogy that omits the ridiculous parts is not describing the animal you had. People often cry more at the funny lines than at the solemn ones, which is exactly as it should be.

End by addressing them directly if you can bear to. "Thank you for every single day" does more work in six words than a closing paragraph about the meaning of loss.

If you are going to read it to other people, read it alone first, out loud, twice. You will find the line that breaks you, and knowing where it is takes most of its power away.

Print it in a larger font than you think you need. Crying makes small text unreadable, and having something solid to hold gives your hands a job.

Ask somebody in advance to take over if you cannot finish, and tell them which paragraph to start from. Almost everyone who has done this says it was the arrangement that let them get through it.

And it is completely acceptable to write it and not read it. Plenty of people write a eulogy for one reader, put it on the memorial page, and never say a word of it out loud.

A eulogy written on the back of an envelope on the worst day of the year has a way of disappearing. Type it up while it still exists, and put it somewhere permanent.

The obvious place is the memorial itself, where it sits with the photographs and the timeline, and where the people who also loved the animal can read it and add their own. It is the difference between a private act of writing and something the whole circle of people who knew them can share.

Some people also engrave a line of it, or read it again on the first anniversary. A eulogy is not a single-use object; it is the most complete thing you are ever likely to write about that animal.