23/07/2025
The Importance of Choosing a Local, Family-Owned Pet Crematorium:
A Reflection Inspired by Experience
In an increasingly commercialised world, where many aspects of pet care are outsourced or handled through large, impersonal systems, the value of a local, family-owned pet crematorium cannot be overstated.
Dr. Nigel Bradfield BVSc MRCVS a respected local veterinary surgeon with over four decades of experience recently shared his reflections on end-of-life pet care, underscoring just how vital this choice can be for pet owners and veterinary professionals alike.
As Dr. Bradfield admits, much of his early veterinary career focused, understandably, on the care of living animals. Like many in the profession, he gave limited thought to what happened after a pet passed away. For years, standard cremation processes were treated as logistical necessities rather than deeply personal moments deserving of care, dignity, and transparency. However, his perspective changed when he began working closely with Cherry Tree Pet Crematorium.
Cherry Tree is a family-run crematorium built on compassion, trust, and openness qualities that are often lost in larger, corporate providers. What sets them apart is not just their facilities or processes, but the people behind them. David, his son Joseph, and their team treat every pet with the same respect and tenderness they would give their own. Families are offered full transparency, and individual cremations are carried out promptly, with ashes returned the next working day not a week later via a third party.
What’s more, Cherry Tree has gone further in advancing compassionate care by creating the UK’s first dedicated on-site euthanasia clinic, designed to offer pets and their families a calm, private space for their final goodbye. The experience is personal, peaceful, and deeply respectful something Dr. Bradfield saw as a much-needed alternative to the often rushed, clinical environment of in-practice euthanasia.
Cherry Tree’s service has grown not through flashy marketing or corporate deals, but entirely through word of mouth a testament to the trust and genuine care they’ve earned from countless families and professionals over the years.
As Dr. Bradfield rightly states, “not all cremations are equal.” And just as we’re careful about how we care for our pets in life, we owe it to them and their families to show the same care in their passing.
For veterinary professionals, pet owners, and anyone involved in end-of-life care, partnering with a local, independent crematorium like Cherry Tree isn’t just a better option it’s the right one.
Cherry tree welcome veterinary surgery visits and encourage our open door policy with our veterinary partners.
Ask if your vet has visited all areas of the crematorium they are recommending.
Nigel’s words. :
As a Veterinary Surgeon who has recently retired after 43 years as a practicing small animal Vet, I would like to reflect on one aspect of the care of pets that has changed greatly since I qualified in 1982. I refer to the euthanasia and aftercare of pets that have passed and how this has changed for the better.
I have to admit that I gave little thought to how and by whom cats and dogs were cremated over the years. I qualified in an era when the practice’s deceased dogs and cats were collected by the local council. Thank goodness this stopped many years ago and now all pets are sent to a crematorium for either individual with ashes returned to the owner or a communal cremation. However, it was only relatively late in my career that I realised that not all cremations are equal.
In the twilight of my career, I established a dedicated at home pet euthanasia service called Time2saygoodbye. It was at this time I started working very closely alongside David Funnell at Cherry Tree Pet Crematorium at High Halden, Ashford. As a small animal practice owner in Maidstone, I knew of David Funnell and Cherry Tree, who sometimes would collect a dog or cat for individual cremation on behalf of an owner. However, the vast majority of our cremation services were carried out outside of the county and individual cremations were returned 7 to 10 days later. As I mentioned earlier it was a service I gave little thought to, but I was beginning to see an increasing number of my clients requesting cremations to be carried out at Cherry Tree.
So, on establishing Time2saygoodbye I approached David to see if we could work alongside each other providing an at home euthanasia and individual cremation service. David gave me an in-depth tour of his crematorium and explained his cremation service and I was incredibly impressed. David, and Joseph his son, and all his staff show great compassion and care in what they do and all the animals are treated with dignity and care, as if they were one of their own family pets. From day one David supplied me with full 24 hour, 7 days a week access to all areas of the crematorium and I could see all that happens on site.
It was certainly a fault of mine that whilst in practice I gave too little thought to the choice of cremation services provider. As vets we perhaps unsurprisingly gave more thought to the living animal. With hindsight and with working closely alongside Cherry Tree these last few years, I have realised this was a mistake. David Funnell has established a successful crematorium that has grown organically by word of mouth. His crematorium was not advertised to the profession by salesmen or flashy promotion material in the post. Pet owners used David and Cherry Tree because it was a service they could trust with individual cremations being carried out within 24 hours and ashes returned the next working day.
David has also built and established a dedicated euthanasia clinic at Cherry Tree from which Time2saygoodbye is now run by Laura and Anna on my retirement. David had the vision to see that a clinic which offers an at home calm environment for your pets’ euthanasia was greatly needed. As a practicing vet I knew the service we offered in the practice was often too hurried and stressful for both the owner and their pet. This is why I established Time2saygoodbye and David opened his clinic at Cherry Tree, to offer peaceful and kind euthanasia’s, using the most modern sedation procedures.
The at home euthanasia service continues to grow exponentially as clients realise it truly offers that final kind gift of a gentle, stress-free passing. And now Cherry Tree and David Funnell have taken this idea further forward to offer the UK’s first dedicated euthanasia clinic on site.
I can thoroughly recommend Cherry Tree Pet Crematorium to all vets and owners alike and I just wish I had given this area of pet care more thought earlier in my career. As I mentioned earlier not all cremations are equal and you should always check with your vet as to where and which crematorium is used.
It is an area of our pet care that we should all give more consideration to, as with a lot of services the cheapest is not always the best.
Dr Nigel Bradfield BVSc MRCVS
24/2/25
