When your pet dies, you have only a few legal options for disposing of the body.
If you own the land you live on, you can bury the animal in your yard, as long as it doesn’t create a “nuisance,” and the body is demonstrably disease-free, and the plot is sufficiently far away from a water supply. If you’re a renter, good luck getting permission from the landlord to dig a grave on the property.
If the animal weighs less than 15 pounds (and you are a monster born without a heart), you can throw its body in the garbage.
If it weighs 16 pounds or more, section 10.08.040 of the King County Board of Health Code states that you can take the remains to a rendering plant, where it will be converted into tallow and protein meal to feed poultry and livestock.
Other options include a plot at the pet cemetery, landfill, or transfer station, but if you choose those last two options, you’ll need to fill out a generator’s waste clearance application form and have it approved by the King County Solid Waste Division’s waste clearance program, by which time you’re sure to have spent even more time with your beloved pet’s lifeless body than you’d ever dreamed necessary.
