Still Running — Closing the Accounts, Records and Routines After a Pet Dies

It is the second day. The first one at least had a shape to it — an appointment, or no appointment, and a drive, and a house to come back to. The second day has no shape at all, and it is the day everything you set up to keep your animal alive carries on as though nothing has happened.

The food ships. The premium comes out on its usual date. Somewhere a reminder is already queued for a vaccination that is not going to happen, and nobody has told the system anything.

None of it is urgent. Almost all of it can wait a week. But it does not stop on its own, and nobody is coordinating it, because every company involved knows one piece and nothing else. The only place it is joined up is your head, in the week your head is least able to hold anything. So it gets done in fragments, when something arrives and forces it — a bag of food on the step, a renewal notice, a text in a supermarket aisle asking you to book a check-up.

Still Running is a place to write it down once, in an order, so it stops finding you at random for the next year.

The method: the Standing Arrangements

Everything an animal needs is held up by arrangements somebody made. Four questions find all of them, and the order is the useful part. What is still charging. What still lists them. What belongs somewhere else. Who has not been told. Money first, because it is the only one with a clock on it. People last, at whatever pace you like, because nobody is charging you for that one.

Eight worksheets

• The day — written down while it is still exact, because you will be asked for the date more often than you expect, and in a few weeks you will not be sure whether it was the Tuesday or the Wednesday.
• The clinic's page — the one sheet somebody else fills in. Hand it to the vet's office or read it over the phone. It is also the page that switches off the reminder texts, which cannot be undone once one has landed.
• Money still moving — every subscription, premium, plan and retainer, what you were told when you canceled it, and the one-off bills that do not recur.
• The records — the microchip registry, the insurer, the license, the groomer, the app that still has a profile with a photograph on it.
• What goes back — in both directions, including what came back to you and when.
• The telling list — everyone attached to the animal rather than to you. The walker, the neighbor who waves, the friend who always asks. It is the one page somebody who wants to help can actually do for you.
• Fourteen days — for the animal still in the house. Observation, not assessment, and written to be handed to a veterinarian.
• The keep page — optional, and optional forever. What you would want written down while you still remember it exactly, and where the photographs are.

Who it is for

Anyone whose animal has died in the last few weeks and who has worked out that eleven things need dealing with before they are anywhere near ready to deal with anything. It assumes nothing about how you feel and asks nothing about it.

What it will not do

It contains nothing veterinary. It will not tell you whether a decision was the right one or whether the timing was right, and there is nothing in here that scores or assesses an animal. It is not grief counseling and does not pretend to be. If you are still deciding, this is the wrong book — that is a conversation with your veterinarian.

Rules about registries, licenses, remains and refunds vary by where you live and who you are dealing with, so every one of them is a blank for you to fill in with what you were actually told.

Format

24 pages, US Letter. Print at home or fill it in on screen. One PDF, yours to keep and reprint. Instant download, no account needed.

Educational use. This is a record-keeping instrument. It is not veterinary, legal or financial advice, and it is not a substitute for a professional who knows your situation.