GETTING PERSONAL: You Die, Your Pet Retires In Luxury

By Kaja Whitehouse

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Most people expect to leave their pets with friends or family members when they die.

Charlotte Reed is among a growing number of pet lovers who's taking a different route. The 39-year-old small-business owner has made arrangements in her will to send her dogs to the Golden Years Retirement Home, a pet sanctuary in West Hampton, N.Y., that will pamper the animals for life.

Once there, the dogs will spend their days in the center's common area, where they can chew up furniture and watch doggie movies like "101 Dalmatians" with other orphaned dogs. They are guaranteed private living quarters, on-site access to health care, frequent walks and meals that meets their dietary needs. The center even has a behaviorist on staff to assess the animals' needs and communicate them to the staff.

"The place is lovely, and they have a cemetery there, so (the dogs) can spend the rest of their life there and be buried there," said Reed, a pet consultant and owner of a pet care shop in Manhattan, who added the pet home to her estate plan four years ago.

Pet retirement homes, also known as pet sanctuaries, offer an attractive alternative to pet owners who, when designing their estate plans, cannot find an appropriate caretaker for their pets.

Pet retirement homes come in all shapes and sizes. On the high end, pet lovers can reserve slots at retirement centers that house pets in big houses and letthem frolic on grand estates. There are also a number of simpler, mom-and-pop type shops run by people (often couples) who simply want to devote their lives to homeless animals. Pet owners can even seek out retirement homes that specialize in unusual pets, like exotic birds or potbellied pigs.

People who choose pet retirement homes in lieu of individual caretakers tend to be a minority, estate planners said. They may be elderly people with no close relatives, or pet owners with hard-to-maintain animals, like horses or exotic birds.

Increasingly, however, retirement homes are becoming an attractive option for finicky pet owners who like the idea of leaving their pets with people who make animal care their primary focus. Individual caretakers can seem less reliable by contrast, said Sybil Erden, executive director of The Oasis Sanctuary for birds in Cascabel, Ariz. People become sick, lose their jobs, or simply become preoccupied with new relationships or a growing family, she said.

This perspective helped form Stephen and Kaye Horn's decision to choose a pet retirement center over an individual caretaker. The Houston couple developed an estate plan in 1999 that leaves their four poodles to the Stevenson Companion Animal Life-Care Center, a pet retirement home owned by Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine. The center, which is fully furnished to look like a real home, including air-conditioning, is located on 10 acres of land next to the veterinarian school and is staffed, in part, by students of the school.

"I guess I don't have anybody I would leave them to who I think would love them and take good care of them the same way," said Mrs. Horn.

Of course, choosing a pet retirement home can require a lot of hard work. And paying for a slot can present an even bigger challenge.

One of the first things pet owners should do when looking into a home is to inquire about its contingency plan, said David Congalton, who researched the subject for "When Your Pet Outlives You," a book he co-wrote with his wife. Many of these places have been around only since the 1990s, and some of them have yet to receive any donations for the care of a pet. People need to look at the finances to be assured that the place won't shut down during the pet's life, said Congalton.

It's also important to consider the high price tag that can be associated paying for the lifelong care of an animal. The Golden Years Retirement Home, which is owned by the Bide-A-Wee animal shelter, charges $10,000 per pet, while the Stevenson Companion Animal Life-Care Center charges about $25,000 per animal. Kansas State University's Perpetual Pet Care Program charges $50,000 for a large animal and $75,000 for animals with special needs. Some retirement homes and sanctuaries, like The Oasis Sanctuary, will charge a minimum entrance fee based on estimated medical and boarding costs.

To keep the costs down, pet owners might purchase a term life insurance policy to be paid to the retirement home or to the executor of the estate upon death. People might also consider negotiating the price since some retirement homes will lower the cost for people who cannot afford it.

Another less costly option would be to work instead with a "no-kill" animal shelter or sanctuary. These are places that put pets up for adoption and agree not to kill them if a home cannot be found.

The Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, Utah, for example, is a sanctuary with an estate-planning program that guarantees that up to six of pets will "either be placed in new permanent homes or in a sanctuary for the rest of their natural lives," according to the Web site. The cost? People give as much as they can.

Not only is this option cheaper, but it could be better suited to a lot of animals, said Congalton. "We do call them companion animals for a reason," he said. "They should be with companions."