Farewell Friends & Tributes

EVERYONE at Stream Valley realizes how hard it is to say goodbye to a lifetime friend and that often it is made even more difficult to do in strange (medical) surroundings.  The doctors and a staff member will come to your home or property to provide a private and more personal time for saying goodbye to an ill or debilitated senior pet companion.  Please call and ask us to arrange an in-office or a private at-home farewell. 

 Another very difficult thing to do is to ask about and then decide what to do once our companion has passed, so we have listed the various choices and what they mean for your private consideration--

 Most families will choose a Simple Cremation without the return of ashes; they feel the memories of a life of love and fun are reminder enough.

For some, Individual Cremation, in which the ashes of your companion are returned in a simple but elegant pine urn, is a comfort and possibly the beginning of a special tribute (burial at a favorite shared place of memory) to that special life long friend.

Different urns can be requested and these can be viewed at the following web site:

 Agape Pet Services

A small gold plaque with a name can also be requested to adorn the urn of your choice.

Finally, a note from Dr.Corey, "Just as my father did for his beloved dog 'Sill' many years ago," you can arrange formal burials through the above memorial company, or take them yourself to that special place you own, their home away from home, and no one will ever ask where that private place for the both of you is!

If you have lost a loved one and would like to add a memorial, please submit a message and/or photo to be displayed to: svvh@comcast.net

Tributes

Here is a poem that we would like to share with you, entitled

Friend's Farewell

 I look at the tiny black and white photo of a small boy, born 1904 in Middletown, New York. He is wearing knickers! A wide brim hat covers his head as an arm surrounds a small dog that I know is "Boots."

I know that Boots once (mistakenly) jumped into the dumbwaiter in the upstairs New York flat where the little boy lived and that Boots wound up three flights downstairs but lived so the tale could be laughed about; I can still hear my father laughing when he recounted this childhood memory.

There is another black and white photo of a tall, handsome Army officer, holding in his hand a small puppy that he had just found; I know this dog's name was "Sill," for Fort Sill, Oklahoma where my father was stationed when he met my mom and found that dog, the first of his adult life.

I have more photos in my album; there is one of my mother, spooning with Sill looking very pregnant, (Sill was before my mother), and a photo of my father laying in the yard of their first home in Silver Spring, Maryland with Sill's puppies all around him playing in the fall leaves.

"Skunky" came into the home in Falls Church, Virginia soon after my oldest sibling was born and never left; it was where we all grew up, where I, the youngest child of three, learned the words to one of Dad's favorite old songs:

How much is that doggie in the window,
The one with the waggly tail?

How much is that doggie in the window?
I must know if that doggie's for sale.

Then listened to his story of how difficult it had been to say goodbye to Sill--Dad's favorite--when a veterinarian (not his daughter) said there was nothing more that could be done for her; she could not walk any longer.

We will forever miss those that loved us and we them, for so long and so well, BUT the memories are a wonderful comfort for our hearts in the early days and even years later...

With our sympathy and shared loss.