A Requiem for Rover

Md. Funeral Home Sends Off Cherished Pets With Rites Fit for a Human

That night when his beloved Chuckie passed away -- when the vet said the ailing tan pug had taken a sudden turn for the worse, and nothing more could be done -- Pio Masone felt crushing despair.

He carried his lifeless dog out of the animal hospital in Rockville and sat in his Jeep Cherokee, cradling the small body on his lap as his son Ian drove home. That evening last month, grief settled over the Masone clan like a heavy blanket. Never mind that Chuckie, strictly speaking, wasn't human: He was family all the same. And so arrangements were made.

Ten days later, on a stifling afternoon in rural upper Montgomery County, a two-car funeral procession eased into Sugarloaf Pet Gardens, where Chuckie, reposed in a linen-lined dog coffin, his little head resting on an embroidered pillow, would be committed to the earth. His grave, in the shade of a cherry tree, had been dug with care -- a neat, pug-size rectangle four feet deep, bordered by turflike outdoor carpeting laid for the burial service.

Clifford Neal showed the way. For about the 1,500th time in two decades -- since he quit farming, converted some of his land to an animal cemetery and became an undertaker for pets -- Neal, 89, led mourners into the graveyard, carrying the deceased this day in the back seat of his sky blue Lincoln Town Car.

As usual, he had seen to every detail.

Chuckie's headstone was on order from the quarry, an 8-by-16-inch brick of polished Georgia granite with a chiseled epitaph:

Thank you for the joy

You are loved and missed

It will lie flat atop his grave, like the headstones marking hundreds of other Sugarloaf plots.

And before the interment, an open coffin viewing in a parlor at the cemetery office had allowed the mourners -- Masone, his wife, their two teenage sons and a teenage relative -- a final look at Chuckie, who was named for a "Rugrats" character. The dog, his fur washed and brushed by Neal, was laid out on his right side, his sturdy plastic coffin set on a wooden table and flanked by wreaths of silk flowers.

Afterward, Masone, 54, sighed and said, "He looked just like he was sleeping."

The bill: $1,150 for the plot, headstone and Chuckie's almond-colored, waterproof casket, as well as perpetual care. "Money well spent," Masone said.