Where exactly is my Guinea Pig?

After watching last night’s episode of Today Tonight, I knew I was conned and I will never find out where my little Guinea Pig is for sure. I was totally devastated of course. The feeling was worse than when I found him dead on the morning of the 7th of May.

‘Pets At Peace’ is the company that I chose to handle my Guinea Pig’s cremation. We chose cremation because we don’t have a backyard to bury him in. The three people that I communicated with during the whole process promised that my Guinea Pig would be cremated individually and then returned to me in an urn of my choice. When queried, they also reassured me that they do not throw animals out and promised not to mix up my pet with another. Unfortunately Police discovered that pets that were meant to be cremated were in fact dumped beside the Midland Highway near Bendigo. Now I will never be sure if he is really inside the urn or has been left to rot in the bushland by the side of the highway.

How can people be so heartless to do such a thing? If he was really abandoned by the highway, we had in fact paid dearly for a company to just throw him away. The show never mentioned my Guinea Pig but if the police discovered two animal dumping sites within a km of each other, and another one on the other side of Bendigo, it is highly likely that the same thing may have happened to our little one. The show revealed that this is not just a one off thing but that the company has done it before. To think that I nearly praised the company’s good service in this blog, I now feel sick thinking that our little Guinea Pig could be all alone in bushland so far away from us.

What should I do with the urn? Should I unseal it to take a look? How could I tell Guinea Pig ash from other animal’s ash? Is it scientifically possible? If it is another animal’s ash, I bet the owner of that pet would miss it just as much as I do.

Guinea Pigs are not humans but a beloved pet is a loved one as precious as any other loved ones in the human form. It has been a struggle living without him for nearly 3 months now. He may be small but he played a big part in our daily lives. As I looked at some photos of him last week, I caught myself thinking that I am gradually coping better with his loss. I was beginning to focus more on the good times we had together. Now that I have seen what was reported on Today Tonight, everything has been turned upside down again. It will take me ages to recover from this shock. It will take me even longer to trust anyone else again.