Our values at Dignity
We give our best for everyone
We care passionately
We keep our promises
We do the right thing
If we can, we will
What makes us different?
Respect
We’re here to help give your pet the send-off they deserve. We promise to handle and treat your pet with the utmost respect whilst they are in our care.
Personalisation
Our service is tailor-made to you. Whether it’s a paw print, fur clipping or placing a favourite toy in with your pet, our team will guide you and help you make the best decision for your family.
Responsiveness
We offer a responsive collection service and will usually collect your pet on the same day of you calling. Your pet will be gently placed into one of our beds and transported to Dignity in a pet hearse.
Why we care
We are pet owners too
Our dedicated team, some with bereavement counselling experience, are also pet owners. They are on hand to walk you through every stage of saying goodbye, to cremation and then finally helping you choose your remembrance.
Honest and personal service
We can provide you with the option of us collecting from your home or your vets, or if you choose to personally bring your pet into us, we can help you with your wishes for a same day or an attended cremation service. Dignity provides you with an honest, caring and personal service.
The Dignity Promise
At Dignity we promise...
To treat your pet with the utmost care and respect
To cremate your pet individually
The ashes you receive are only those of your pet
To personalise the service for you
Award Winning
At Dignity, we understand the sensitive nature of losing a beloved pet. We’re here to offer our award-winning services with empathy and respect, ensuring your pet receives the dignified send-off they deserve.
Our commitment to excellence is recognised throughout the industry. We’re proud to have received the Service Excellence Award in 2021 at the Inspire Business Awards, alongside being finalists for both the Inspire Environmental Responsibility Award and The AGFD Good Funeral Awards in 2023. Additionally, we are ranked 1st by FreeIndex for Pet Service Providers in the UK, and finalists for Family Business of the Year in the South East 2023, Animal Star Awards, Pet Industry Federation Awards 2020, and Environmental Business of the Year 2020. We’re also the reigning Professional Dog Business UK winners for 2023 and 2022.
These accolades serve as a testament to our dedication to providing exceptional care and service. You can trust us to handle your pet’s final arrangements with the utmost compassion and dignity.
Our ethics
At Dignity we adhere to a strict code of practice and are founder members of the Association of Private Pet Cemeteries and Crematoria and have been independently inspected and approved, ensuring you of a genuine service.
Ethical sourcing is a priority for Dignity with many products manufactured and supplied by small independent local businesses in the UK.
We love Dignity Pet Crematorium’s unspoiled rural location and are passionate about trying to minimise the impact of our activities and integrate them with initiatives that will benefit the local ecosystem as well as doing our bit for charity. Below you’ll find a few things we have done to help so far.
What we are doing for the environment
We have partnered with the environment organisation, Ecologi, who fund projects to plant trees and make it their business to be climate positive.
For every pet that is cremated at Dignity Pet Crematorium, Ecologi will plant a tree in one of their projects. By funding tree planting, we will be planting a mix of native and biodiverse tree species in Ecologi’s planting sites around the world. It’s now common knowledge that one of the best tools to tackle the climate crisis and keep our temperatures from rising above 1.5C is to plant trees. They are also crucial in preventing ecological collapse.
In their video, George, the Poet explains that we are ‘Planting seeds of hope for those next in line’.
Read More
We were very keen to provide owners with a greener send off for their much loved pets and thought using solar power would be a great way of reducing our impact on the environment. We looked into using the heat from the cremators to heat the pet crematorium but the cost of the specialist equipment made it unfeasible – we felt using solar power was the next best thing. The use of solar energy will reduce Dignity’s carbon footprint and hopefully also cut running costs.
When we heard about a local community let scheme called Hartley Wintney Solar Action Group (HWSAG) it gave us the prod in the back we needed to get solar installed. After extensive research the group appointed Paarl energy. As part of the deal each installation arranged through the HWSAG not only got a discounted rate but Paarl energy committed to install solar PV to a community building (like schools, community centres etc) for each 25 installations made through the group.
Feel free to contact Hartley Wintney Solar Group for more information on the scheme (which is open to non residents within a 25 mile radius of the village) via email at Hwsolar2011@yahoo.co.uk
We have used our peaceful Gardens of Remembrance to give some bees a safe environment to thrive in. We have set aside areas in the garden for beehives and host them for a local award winning bee keeper (who does all the hard work!). As a benefit to us we hope the bees with pollinate everything in sight and increase the amount of flowers in our garden – we also sell the Dignity honey here.
We have always tried to lend a hand to local animal rescues that dedicate countless hours to saving animals and finding them homes. The people that run and help at these small rescues often go without themselves in order to care for the animals they look after. We have become a release site for injured hedgehogs that have been rescued and rehabilitated by Happy Hedgehog rescue in Yateley. We provide a safe haven for them once they are well enough to be set free. We have two hedgehog houses and a feeding station in our gardens for them.
We also look after the hedgehogs that aren’t lucky enough to survive and have set aside a place in our Woodland for them after cremating them free of charge for the rescue.
For more information or to help support the rescue visit
happyhedgehog.org.uk/
Dignity Pet Crematorium also has remembrance areas set aside for other animal rescues in their Woodland area. We offer a discount for assistance dogs and other animal charities needing our service and have erected free plaques to commemorate animals that have been re-homed from rescues such as The Labrador Lifeline Trust and The Ark Cat Rescue.
We have set aside several areas within our grounds to be protected as Natural Areas in order to help the local habitat and ecosystem. If you walk round the gardens you will see log piles set aside for insects and small animals, memorial benches, bird boxes, bird feeders and sections of grass that we leave natural so that meadow flowers can seed and thrive.
Ashes can be scattered within these areas but markers are restricted to plaques mounted on one centrally positioned Oak Post per area. All the wood is sourced from an award-winning social enterprise called the wood@aldingbourne project that operates a wood recycling scheme and is run by a charitable trust that supports and employs adults with learning difficulties. It is affiliated to the National Community Wood Recycling Project www.communitywoodrecycling.org.uk.
We hope these areas make the gardens all the more interesting and beautiful to those of you who visit us.
Amongst our various caskets and urns used for placing pet’s ashes in are several eco friendly options such as scatter tubes made from recycled cardboard and biodegradable bamboo scatter pouches. Pet owners can also purchase Blooming Remembrance Hearts that have been impregnated with spring flower seeds and can be used to mark a pet’s final resting place naturally at home, on a favourite walk or in our gardens.
We also offer eco coffins for home burial and remembrance items like our memorial bird boxes which give owners an opportunity to give a wild bird a home whilst creating a tribute to their pet.
Below we have listed some of the environmentally products we sell on our online shop:
As well as recycling the normal items like batteries, cardboard and glass we also compost and re–use our green waste in our gardens. Our paths are constructed of wood chippings that have been recycled from trees that have fallen down during bad weather and when expanding our car park we even recycled the earth on site by using it to create a new memorial bank in our woodland area. In addition to this we are the first pet crematorium in the country to join an innovative scheme pioneered by human crematoria to recycle the metals from orthopaedic repairs that are recovered after cremation.
We offer pet owners the choice to take the metal home with them or opt out of the scheme but find many clients prefer to have the metal implants (such as pins, plates, screws and occasionally replacement hips) recycled. With more and more pets having complicated surgery involving implants we envisage that recycling these metals will rapidly increase in the coming years. The scheme is run by a firm called Orthometals, who donate a proportion of the profits made by recycling to the charities chosen by the crematorium.
Supporting charities
We support local animal charities in a variety of ways. We offer discounted rates, make regular donations of unwanted bedding, food and medications, have fundraising activities, help with trophies and rosettes at dog shows and set aside areas for charities in our gardens.
At the end of each year we make and sell Christmas decorations for pet owners to leave a tribute to their beloved pet. All proceeds go to the animal charities we support and the decorations are displayed at the Dignity entrance on our monkey puzzle tree in the run up to Christmas.
Charity wishing well
We have a charity wishing well in our gardens which we empty every few months and split the donations equally between different animal charities. We ensure all of the animal charities that we support receive at least £100 each year. We try and give our support to smaller animal charities that need it the most but also work with larger charities when we know the money raised goes to the care of the animals.
We also accept donations from clients and promise the money will go direct to rescues that are dedicated to helping support animals of all shapes and sizes. If you want more information on any of the local charities we support or are interested in re-homing a rescue pet then please email us.
Get in touch today
Contact a member of our dedicated team for help arranging your pet’s cremation.