When it became clear that Pierre’s days were numbered, Derrick Holland began making arrangements for after his beloved Yorkshire terrier passed. The first order of business: preparing his “best friend” for the freezer.
Pierre was preserved indefinitely thanks to the handiwork of Chuck Rupert, one of the nation’s preeminent freeze dry taxidermists. For around $800, Mr. Rupert shepherded Pierre through a five-month process to extract all of the moisture from the Yorkie’s body while preserving his original size, shape and silky coat.
“Pierre looks the same now as the day we brought him home,” says Mr. Holland, 52, from Granite Falls, North Carolina. “While nothing is like having your pet back alive, this is the next best thing.”
Mr. Rupert’s Second Life Freeze Dry, based in Springboro, Pennsylvania, is one of a small number of companies which offer grieving pet owners the option to – quite literally – freeze their departed pets for posterity. They say business has been heating up as consumers seek out a more natural alternative to traditional taxidermy, in which a pet’s hide is removed, treated with noxious chemicals and stretched over an artificial mannequin. By contrast, freeze drying preserves the animal’s skeletal structure and shape, leaving less room for shrinkage, discoloration or distortion.
Although data on pet preservation is sparse, freeze drying professionals are likely to benefit from a boom in pet ownership. About 70% of U.S. households had at least one pet last year, up from 56% in 1988, and thanks to a surge in new owners during the pandemic, Morgan Stanley estimates that petcare spending could nearly triple to $275 billion by 2030. Freeze dry specialists see an opportunity to grow their niche among pet owners who might otherwise choose traditional taxidermy, and despite prices which reach into the thousands, they are not having trouble filling their machines.
At Bischoff’s Pet Preservation in North Hollywood, California, proprietors Rey Macias and Ace Rodriguez say demand has been on the rise for the last three years. They currently operate five industrial freeze dryers and process around 30 pets per month, from cats to cockatiels.
“We get people from all over,” says Mr. Rodriguez. “We just did a pet from Hong Kong, we’ve had Hawaii, Oregon, Indiana, Florida. Really everywhere.”
While freeze drying prices vary based on the weight of the animal, from $900 for a four pound pet up to $2,000 for a 20-pounder, the average cost hovers around $1,300 – roughly in line with traditional taxidermy. Based on last year’s count, Second Life Freeze Dry likely cleared six figures in revenue between his two machines. Mr. Rupert declined to discuss specifics.
Precision is the value proposition of freeze dryers. They promise to recreate a pet’s likeness far more accurately than any other preservation method, and for some owners, this is reason enough to package their deceased pets in coolers and FedEx them across an ocean. Once received, the drying process can take as long as six to nine months, but evangelists argue that it’s worth the wait.
“The way your pet comes in is exactly how your pet’s going to look on the way out,” says Mr. Rodriguez. This provides a leg up over traditional taxidermists, who rely on artificial molds to recreate the shape of an animal – with varied success. “I could give you an amazing looking tiger [using traditional taxidermy], but you know what Scruffy or Sparky look like, whether they have a lazy eye or a floppy ear.” Traditional taxidermy can’t necessarily recreate that.
One of the challenges facing prospective freeze dryers is simply acquiring the right equipment, with large machines retailing for over $100,000.
Carla Brauer, a former veterinary assistant and pet crematory worker, launched Rest Well Pet Memorials in 2020 to help owners explore new ways to memorialize their pets. On top of her existing services, which include bone cleaning, water-based cremation and hide tanning, she hopes to begin offering freeze drying this fall.
“The limitation right now is that there really are very, very few places offering [freeze drying] machines…They’re expensive, and a lot of taxidermists can’t afford the initial investment,” she says.
Rich DeLong, the owner of Botanique Preservation Equipment in Phoenix, Arizona, says this is an issue he’s run into many times.
“Over the years, I’ve sold very few brand new machines to taxidermists. They normally were looking for something that would be very easy to use at a really good price. So we sold a lot of refurbished machines,” says DeLong, who was unable to provide an exact figure.
Once acquired, taxidermists also have to budget operating expenses for the industrial-sized dryers – and to some degree, that’s capping companies’ growth. “I’m burning $400 plus a month on electricity between those two machines, keeping the shop cool and running a walk-in freezer,” says Mr. Rupert of Second Life Freeze Dry. Last year he preserved a record 92 pets – “too many” by his account – and has begun referring customers to other providers to help ease the pressure.
“If I was 30? Whole different game. I could add a dryer or two and it’s almost like the sky’s the limit,” the 57-year-old says.
While Ms. Bauer is still months away from putting her used machine to work, she already has a waitlist ten pets deep.
“The thought of being able to feel the fur of a pet that’s no longer with you is really special,” she says. “People like having a tangible representation of a memory.”
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