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Just Because You Want to Freeze-Dry Your Pet Doesn't Mean You're Crazy

If the idea of Fido propping your door open and greeting you eager eyed from beyond the grave every morning is completely terrifying, you'll have to take it up with the hundreds of pet owners each year who choose to ship their once-alive pets across...

If the idea of Fido propping your door open and greeting you eager eyed from beyond the grave every morning is completely terrifying, you’ll have to take it up with the hundreds of pet owners each year who choose to ship their once-alive pets across the country to be freeze dried; in many cases, in preparation for dying themselves.

Why anybody would choose to preserve their alive-looking pet as a memory keepsake seems beyond most rational thought so it’s not surprising that the reasons that Mike McCullough, a taxidermist from Fort Loudon, Pa. who has been practicing for over a decade, recently gave Live Science for freezing the fluffy critters reads like an hourlong therapy session.

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Despite the fact that having your pet freeze-dried post-mortum requires your pet to be frozen and then immediately shipped to Pennsylvania, McCullough reported that most people choose to undergo the labor intensive process because they simply cannot bear to let go of an animal they have spent most of their life with.

Apparently most folks who do choose to pay to ship their animals to McCullough are, shall we say, part of an older demographic, who often live alone and want to preserve their loyal buddies so they can be buried with them when they too pass. So what could potentially be a goose-bump inducing case of co-dependency can actually read as an endearing instance of animal/human friendship.

“I actually had a lady send me a picture,” McCullough said. She’d preserved her grandfather’s dog, and then her grandfather passed away. “There’s this picture of this grandfather and this dog actually in the same casket.”

In an attempt to explain what might drive a person to want to preserve a pet in this manner, Allen McConnell, a psychologist at Miami University in Ohio told LiveScience that it may extend from a bond humans develop when they project humanlike qualities onto the animals they live with. Go figure.

At any rate, here are some pictures of post-mortem critters for your perusal. Oh, and happy Friday.