Thursday, April 2, 1998 | 9:20 a.m.
Major led the life of Riley.
Throughout his 17 years, the German Shepherd ate the best food and received the best medical care, according to his owner, Eugene Brown of Las Vegas.
"He was just like a member of the family," says Brown, a retired air force man and hospital business manager. "He was good with the kids when they were young."
So, when Major passed away two years ago, Brown and his wife, Mattie, interred their beloved pet in a grave at the Craig Road Pet Cemetery and Funeral Home, the valley's only pet cemetery, in northwest Las Vegas. It is the final resting place of some 3,000 animals -- four-legged, winged and otherwise.
Spot, Stormy, Sparky and Snoopy; Princess, Duchess and Prince; Lucky, Rags, Fee Foo, Hooligan, Ginger, Nitro and Useless, an "attack poodle," are just a few of the pets who have been laid to rest at the five-acre facility, where the manicured lawns are dotted with brightly colored silk flowers.
A couple of exotic animals -- namely a Siberian tiger and a spider monkey -- are buried here, along with Liberace's four pooches and late comedian Redd Foxx's dog, Dummy. So is Stoney, a 7,000-pound elephant who starred in a show on the Strip prior to his death.
The Browns, who visit Major's plot a couple of times each year to leave flowers, returned recently to say goodbye to their other dog, a 10-year-old Doberman named Rambo, who succumbed to lung cancer.
"It was a very sad loss for us because everyone who knew Rambo liked him," Brown says. Don't let the name fool you. "He was a protective dog in the house, but outside the house ... he was friendly, like a puppy."
The couple spared no expense on burial costs, which Brown estimates to have been about $800 for each dog, including headstones.
"The dogs are a member of the family. You wouldn't dispose of a human member of the family, same thing for a pet." he says. "Only those people who really, truly love their pets would understand that."
Tony Clayton, and his wife Linda, have owned and operated the Craig Road Pet Cemetery and Funeral Home since 1982. He agrees that it takes a special breed -- of person, that is -- to memorialize a household pet.
"This is not for everybody. It's for the people who truly, truly care for their pet. It's that human-animal bond that's there," says Clayton, a soft-spoken man with a warm smile, who previously spent 32 years as a director of human funerals.
For some families who have sought out the pet cemetery's services over the years, a pet's passing can be more traumatic than that of a two-legged loved one.
"You sit on the other side of the counter and just listen to people's stories ... about how much this pet meant to these people," he says. "It goes back to ... a pet relies on you for food, water, love, exercise, care. So, they have poured their whole life into this pet and when they lose it, a part of them is also lost and that's what's very, very hard."
Saying goodbye
Some view it as an unnecessary and eccentric expense, but Clayton considers burial or cremation (which the cemetery also offers) an "option" for honoring a dedicated companion.
(The others, he says, are mass cremation, provided by most veterinarians, or disposal of the remains at the county landfill.)
"We cater to families who care and want something done in a dignified manner ... and on a professional basis," he says. "Families leave here knowing that they have peace of mind, that they were there step-by-step ... everything was explained to them."
Customers of the Craig Road Pet Cemetery can expect to find all of the same services that a human cemetery offers, including removal of the deceased's body. Also available for purchase -- but not required -- are caskets and urns for the remains, and grave markers.
Visitation and funeral services (where "pet prayers" can be recited) are conducted in a small, stained-glass window chapel on the grounds, which are maintained through an endowment and funded through a one-time charge of $41 to customers for each pet buried.
Since internment costs can get expensive, depending on the types of services selected -- cremation starts at $75, burial at $435 and caskets are priced up to $400 -- Clayton chooses not to overwhelm the bereaved.
"We have people that will call (to) price shop, like anything else. We're up front with them," he says. "We know that a family that has lost a pet probably has a lot of veterinary bills, so we have tried to keep our prices very reasonable, to where a family feels comfortable coming to us and doing this.
"What we want is for our families to select the type of services that they want, to follow through with their wishes and make sure that this does not put them into a financial bind. We don't want them to make a rash decision at a time when grief has set in. I've seen it happen too many times in the human funeral business."
Such grief for an animal is common, and "doesn't necessarily have to be different at all" than that for loss of a human life, according to Steven Kalas, program manager of bereavement and pastoral care at Nathan Adelson Hospital.
"There's a portion of society that would look critically on a person grieving the death of a pet the way they would grieve the death of a person, and I think that's a piece of the culture's ignorance because those relationships can be profound," Kalas says.
Especially for those who have thought of the animal as their child. Countless markers on the graves and mausoleum crypts at the pet cemetery feature heartfelt epitaphs signed, "Love Mom and Dad."
"I don't know how many families will come in and (say) ... 'This was our son,' " Clayton says.
No doubt the owners of Goldie, a dearly departed cocker spaniel, felt that way, as evidenced by the inscription on the canine's headstone: "...If tears could build a stairway and heartache make a lane, I'd walk the path to heaven and bring you back again."
Others -- some 40 pet owners -- have opted to join their furry friends in eternal slumber by having their cremated remains buried alongside them. (Another 60 people have already reserved plots or crypts for their inevitable demise.)
Because the land upon which the Craig Road Pet Cemetery sits was originally zoned for a human cemetery, Clayton allows only cremated pet owners to be buried there, even years after their pets have passed.
"People will come to me and say, 'Tony, my pet gave me unconditional love for years and I want to be with my pet. I don't want to be buried at a cemetery where I don't even know who is buried next to me,' " he says.
Former New York professional wrestler Frank Morgan, also known as Paul McManus, joined his cats, Scooty and Tonto, following his murder in 1991. Before that, he visited the cemetery regularly, usually traveling four hours on bicycle from the east side of the valley -- often during the scorching heat of summer.
"He'd come out here and sit for two or three hours and we would talk," Clayton recalls. McManus had requested to be buried there and nearly 60 people attended graveside services.
'Old Duke'
For a while, the cemetery offered grief counseling sessions to the families of all creatures big and small interred there.
But for the past 14 years, they've relied on Duke to cheer folks up.
The golden Lab, who the Claytons nursed back to health from a dog fight after finding him on their property, was returned to his owner once, but managed to find his way back to the cemetery. He has accompanied Clayton to work every morning since.
"When you walk up (to the cemetery's office), he will come up and greet you, walk you inside the office and then go back out," Clayton explains. In his younger years, Duke played fetch with visitors. He continues to escort them to graves.
"It kind of takes their mind off losing their pet to see ... that they can give their love to old Duke where they can't give it to their own pet," he says.
Now that he's getting on in years, Clayton knows that before too long Duke will take his spot at the cemetery alongside the family's other departed pets -- Bun Bun the rabbit, Badlands Billy the greyhound and Maggie the bloodhound among them.
"He's helped a lot of people through their grief process," he says.
Janet Collins has gotten to know Duke well in the 11 years that she and her sons have buried seven cats and dogs there, beginning with a collie named Lad.
"I think when he was laid out, he had his pet blanket and probably a toy," recalls Collins, a mail carrier. Because of rising costs and recent human deaths in the family, Lad is also the only pet for which she's been able to purchase a headstone.
"If (a pet has) been with you so long, they're entitled to something" in death, Collins says. "It's just self-satisfying."
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