FINAL FAREWELL

PALMER — Buttercup came into their lives 12 years ago as a feral cat on a Florida bridge and left this earth through a more peaceful, humane route a couple of weeks ago thanks to Passages Pet Cremation and Grief Center Inc.

“Dr. Lisa Espy is just a very, very special person,” Wasilla resident Susan Goodson said of the owner/operator of the Valley’s only private animal crematorium and euthanasia service, located across from Palmer Junior Middle School on Chugach Street. “Buttercup had helped us through some tough family times and meant a lot to us. Dr. Espy has so much compassion and really takes the time to make it as easy as possible for you when it’s time to say goodbye.”

Espy, a licensed veterinarian who worked at the Mat-Su Borough Animal Shelter and in private clinics before opening her own facility three years ago, said that after years of having to put down mistreated cats and dogs she’s finally feeling like she’s doing some good out there for people and their beloved pets.

“I’ve gotten so much good response from people who are thankful to have an alternative to the usual clinic atmosphere,” said Espy, who admits she’s also glad to be away from the animal shelter because she ended up taking a lot of animals home with her so they wouldn’t be destroyed. “When I worked at the shelter, there were people who’d bring in their pets to be euthanized and they wanted to be with them, but we weren’t set up for that. So I knew there was a need for something here.”

Offering one-on-one support during the bereavement process, Espy goes one step further by guaranteeing pet owners they will get back their own animals’ ashes and anything else they had with them at the time of euthanasia and cremation.

Each animal in Espy’s large, state-of-the-art cremator is separated by fire bricks and carefully tracked with a special tag from start to finish for those who want to keep their pets’ cremains.

To people like Goodson and local Allstate Insurance Agent Gayle Wood, that’s priceless.

Even though a bookcase in Wood’s Knik-area home holds the ashes and memorabilia of about 25 dogs she’s lost over the past few decades, it never gets any easier to say goodbye, she said.

“I had never experienced anything so calming and soothing as Lisa’s place,” said Wood, a recreational musher who has 38 dogs total. “She takes her time and there’s always comforting music and she does the paw prints for you and everything. She gives you a lot of peace of mind.”

The last dog Wood lost, Windy, was a three-time Iditarod finisher she adopted from another musher after her racing heydays in 2003. At age 14 for Windy, Wood knew she had come to the end of her trail and she was happy Espy was there to see her through it.

“She’s still at Passages,” she said. “I need to go pick up her ashes. It’s always hard.”

Espy cremates an average of 130 animals each month, which includes those euthanized at a half-dozen veterinarian clinics in the Valley and Anchorage area.

She charges $75 to put down an animal in one of her two calming euthanasia rooms and $125 if they are euthanized at home. She then charges $1.60 per pound to cremate them, unless the pet owner wants the entire 1,700-degree oven to themselves, then there’s an additional $70 charge.

So to euthanize and cremate a 50-pound dog, for example, it would cost $225 total, she said. There’s a $75 minimum charge for cremation, so even a small animal like a bird or hamster would cost at least that much.

The only exception to the pricing rule would be a horse, she said. She’s cremated a total of four horses now at a cost of $1,500 each because of the labor involved and amount of time in the cremator.

“For horses, I have to use a forklift and get extra help, then it takes eight to 10 hours to cremate them and another two hours to get them into a tin,” she said, adding she’s had the cremains of one horse, Ginger, for about a year now after her owners couldn’t pay their bill and their phone was disconnected. She takes Ginger’s 35 pounds of ashes to Mat-Su College when she’s speaking to a veterinarian tech class there.

The smallest animal she ever cremated was a gold fish, she said.

“I was so afraid the ashes would blow away before I could get them in a container for this little boy,” she said with a sympathetic tone.

Espy also offers a variety of different urns, photo albums, sympathy cards, books and other items to help ease the pain of losing a pet.

She can even hook clients up with a woman in Anchorage who can weave ashes into a swirling glass bead as a keepsake necklace, as well as recommend a more expensive option of turning the ashes into a diamond.

For Goodson and Wood, they’re just happy Espy is there for them and their families now and, they hope, for years to come.

“She could not make a difficult time any easier than she already does,” Goodson said. “I’m so grateful for her.”

Dr. Lisa Espy can be reached at 745-7574.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.