Why Burying Your Pets Body in the Backyard can be Dangerous. ABC News 30/1/25

[Deeds]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-30/why-burying-your-pets-body-in-the-backyard-can-be-dangerous/104682136

[Little Gifts]

I've got a dumb story relating to this. We had a big gauge out of our backyard (suburbs) due to a flooding incident. When my stafford boy passed I decided to take him home  and bury him in the hole and get it filled back in. I used to live rural prior to that and burying your dogs at home was the norm. Fast forward quite some time and we had foster fail Stussy, also a pied stafford. She was only a couple  of months old and came into the house one night with a huge bone. I asked my sister if she'd given it to her (nope) then I worried a neighbour had thrown it over the fence. Then I went all  around the yard and found out poor Bundy had risen to the surface over time and she'd dug him up! Never again!

[sandgrubber]

The article expresses an urban/infilled-suburban viewpoint.

 

Getting to the nearest vet school would be at minimum an 8 hour drive.  And if someone wanted dead pets for research, I'm sure a few notices to local vets would do the trick. The post office wouldn't be happy transporting a dead dog.

 

I've never had any remains resurface.  If you bury high on a gentle slope and cover with 600mm+ it's very unlikely.  Ok the hole is deeper, but the legs stick up.

[tdierikx]

They have a point about burying animals that have been put to sleep by lethal injection. If the body breaks down and leaks Lethbarb into the soil... or worse still the water course... the implications could be nasty for small wildlife, or even for humans.

 

That said, one of my Rottweilers died in our back yard, so no chemical assistance, and we buried her up in the back corner about a metre or so deep, with a piece of steel mesh fencing over the top of her to stop any upward movement, or digging by other dogs. She's still down there some 20 plus years later.

 

T.

[Boronia]

As I normally get (much) older Westies that have had a bit of a tough time the dog turnover here is more than a regular household, sooooo there are little graves around the garden, some have a tree on them and some have a big tree-stump or a giant terracotta pond.

I dread to think what the new owners will do if we ever sell 

I'll need to draw a location map and include it with the contract!

 

one tree stump and one terracotta pond...

 

 

 

[asal]

You raise a good point Boronia

Over some 50 years thats quite a few dogs buried here, along with similar number of horses and cattle. Most old age, some injury or accident.