Frequently asked questions

A free, compassionate resource for pet loss and end-of-life planning: a directory of pet end-of-life services, gentle guides for the hardest decisions, and a Wall of Remembrance where you can create a lasting memorial for a companion who has passed away.

Pet Legacy Guide is a small, independently run project. Using it is free: there are no accounts, no ads, no fees for memorials, and no paid placement in the directory. A business cannot buy a better listing.

In a few specific places. Photos submitted for memorials are screened by Google's Gemini model for inappropriate content; directory descriptions and translations are drafted with AI assistance; and our guides were prepared and translated with AI help. Stories written by visitors are never rewritten by AI. Editors also add a few example memorials for fictional pets (see “Are all the memorials on the wall real?” below).

Eight: English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Japanese, Korean and Italian. Translations may contain imperfections, and the English version is the reference if anything is unclear. Some directory listings exist only in English or in a few languages, and you can write a memorial in any of the eight.

No. Pet Legacy Guide offers general information only. Always consult a licensed veterinarian about your pet's health, including end-of-life decisions. If your pet needs urgent care, call your local vet or an emergency animal hospital right away; nobody monitors this site for emergencies.

We aim for clear text, good contrast, keyboard navigation, and support for screen readers and for light and dark display settings. If you run into a barrier, email us and we will fix it or find another way to get you what you need.

Yes, always. There's no account, no fee, and no catch: just a short form and a photo.

Any companion animal that has died, of any species: dogs, cats, rabbits, horses, birds, reptiles, fish, and everyone in between, including a pet you lost many years ago. Memorials are for animals, not for people, and not for pets who are still alive.

Yes, if you have the right to share the story and photo, for example a family member's, a friend's, or a childhood pet you were part of. If a pet had other owners who might object, it is kind to ask them first.

Every photo is automatically screened for inappropriate content and scanned for malware. Then a real person reads every submission from visitors, photo and story together, before it is published. Nothing a visitor submits goes live automatically.

Not necessarily. So that the Wall of Remembrance never looks empty and visitors can see what a memorial looks like, our editors occasionally add example memorials for fictional pets, with AI-assisted text and images. They are not submitted by visitors, and they are not labelled one by one. Everything a visitor submits is reviewed by a person before it appears.

Usually a day or two, though it can take longer. Because we don't ask for your email address, we can't notify you. Check the Wall of Remembrance after a few days, and if your memorial hasn't appeared, write to us with your pet's name and the date you submitted.

A JPEG, PNG or WebP image up to 5 MB that clearly shows your pet. iPhone HEIC photos need to be saved as JPEG first. Please avoid photos that show identifiable people, especially children; they may be declined. Screenshots, watermarked stock pictures, and images that aren't yours to share can't be accepted.

We remove hidden metadata such as GPS location from photos before publishing, but we can't see what is in the picture itself. Check the background for house numbers, street signs, license plates and faces before you upload.

Anything explicit, violent, hateful, deceptive, or unrelated to a pet memorial, advertising or links to products and services, and other people's personal details such as full names, addresses, phone numbers or social media handles. See our Terms of Service for the full list. If a submission is declined by mistake, contact us and we'll take another look.

There are no accounts, so changes go through us. Email us the memorial's address and what should change. To protect against hoaxes we may ask a question only the submitter could answer, such as details of the photo you uploaded. Changes take effect after the site is rebuilt, usually within a day. Search engines, caches, and web archives may keep copies for longer, and we can't control those.

You can create a memorial for each companion you want to remember, one submission each. Duplicates of the same pet are usually removed, so there's no need to resubmit if yours hasn't appeared yet.

No. There are no comments, ratings or guestbooks, by design. Memorial pages are quiet places that cannot be used to argue, advertise, or harass. Visitors can share a memorial's web address with others.

We plan to keep published memorials online for as long as the site exists, and if the project ever winds down we will say so on the site first. Memorial pages are public, so search engines may index them. If that worries you, write to us before submitting or after, and we'll help where we can.

We gather publicly available information about pet end-of-life services, from sources such as OpenStreetMap and business websites, and organise it by region. Descriptions and translations are drafted with AI assistance, then published without further individual review, so mistakes can slip in. Listings are informational, not endorsements. Always confirm details directly with a business before relying on them.

No. We don't accept payment, commissions or free services for listings, and we don't earn anything when you contact a provider.

Email us with the listing's address and the change you'd like: updated hours or phone number, a corrected description, or removal. We'll make corrections promptly and generally honour removal requests from the business itself.

Let us know by email or the contact form. Coverage is uneven, since it depends on what is publicly available, so some regions have far more listings than others. We would rather hear about a gap than leave it.

Maps show OpenStreetMap tiles. “Open in Google Maps” and similar links are ordinary links that take you to Google only if you click them, and nothing is sent to Google until then.

No. The guides are general information prepared with AI assistance. They are not written or reviewed by veterinarians, and they are not a substitute for one who knows your pet. Use them to prepare questions, not to replace the conversation with your vet.

You are not alone, and grief for a pet is real grief. Our coping guide lists ways to find support, and many countries have pet-loss helplines and counsellors. If you are thinking about harming yourself, please contact your local emergency number or a crisis line right now (in the US you can call or text 988). This site is not a crisis service.

Please do link to and share our guides. If you'd like to republish or translate one, ask us first. Photographs in the guides keep their own open licences, credited beneath each picture.

We never sell it. We don't use accounts, ads or analytics, and we set no cookies of our own. A few service providers process information on our behalf, such as hosting, photo storage, spam protection, and the automated photo checks, and they are listed in our Privacy Policy.

The pet's details, your story and photo (these become public if approved), and a salted, one-way hash of your IP address that we use only to limit abuse. We don't ask for your name or email address for a memorial.

It stays in our private review queue, together with its photo, until we clean it up manually. There is no automatic deletion yet. If you want something removed sooner, email us.

Send us a message through the contact page. Wherever you live, we'll act on reasonable requests to access, correct or delete what we hold about you, and to take down a memorial. See the Privacy Policy for details and your rights.

Children are welcome to read the guides with a trusted adult. The submission and contact forms are meant for adults and for young people with a parent or guardian's permission. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13.