#GBBO Memorial Pet Tattoo
As we get closer to the finals my excitement mounts, just what is it about the Great British Bake Off (#GBBO) that unites an entire nation in happy telly viewing? Is it waiting to see if someone will snap and tip their Baked Alaska in the bin? Are half the audience in love with the sparkly-eyed Liverpudlian baker Paul, or do we just love Mary’s brightly coloured jackets? Well I can’t speak for anyone else but for me it is the lovely Mel and Sue and their gentle innuendos, I love the way they discuss the contestant’s soggy bottoms and seem genuinely upset when someone has to leave the tent. It’s just the most perfect family viewing and there aren’t many shows that fit that bill.
Dog loving Sue Perkins
In an excellent Good Housekeeping article that I read at the weekend, Sue Perkins, a massive dog lover, talks very movingly about losing her pet beagle Pickle, in fact she had a ‘P’ tattooed onto her hand when he died.
“Dogs are fur repositories for everything you can’t say to humans…Everyone’s animals mean something different to them. Pickle stewarded me through my 30s and into my 40s, which were difficult times. I had the tattoo done six months after she died.”
Losing a pet
When you lose a pet there is rarely a funeral, suddenly that all that love and support is gone. And as Sue says in the article the way you speak to your dog, or cat in my case, is unique to you, they can help you through the best and worst of times, and when they’re gone the loss can be just so devastating.
Just as every relationship is different so is the dealing with the loss of that particular pet, you may go through all the well recognised stages of grief – denial, anger, guilt, depression – before a gradual acceptance of the loss. Or you may get waves of grief with highs and lows. However you experience the individual loss there will be certain smells, places or anniversaries that may trigger powerful surges of grief long after the actual death itself.
I really like the way that Sue has memorialised the loss of Pickle with the tattoo, it’s a great way of marking the significance of her relationship with the lovely beagle, as just occasionally non pet owners can sometimes not understand that losing a pet isn’t something that ‘you’ll get over by getting another’. People sometimes don’t realise that your dog/cat/rabbit/budgie is a member of the family and losing them has a massive impact on you and your whole family.
There are lots of really helpful ways you can memorialise your beloved pet, have a funeral, create a ceremony, do something meaningful with their ashes. It doesn’t have to cost money, you could take their ashes on a favourite walk and scatter them on the way round. You could bury the ashes in a sunny spot in the garden. Or, yes, why not a pet tattoo, a lasting tribute to the amazing love that they’ve given you.
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