A husband and wife team from Washburn are receiving kudos for their entrepreneurship in operating a home-based business known as Afterlife Affections.
Alisa and Justin Carney, who started the pet cremation service in 2013, received the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2017 Home-Based Business of the Year Award for Maine.
Each work full-time jobs, Alisa as a veterinary technician in Presque Isle and Justin as a forest ranger. But both are longtime animal lovers who decided that Aroostook County needed a compassionate pet cremation service, following their experience after the death of their dog Oscar in 2013.
“We wanted to make sure it was personal,” Justin Carney said. “We’re just big animal lovers and understand that animals are an extension of a family.”
Pet owners are invited to be present during the cremation, and receive the remains in an urn with a piece of the animal’s hair attached to a ribbon as a remembrance, Carney said.
“We’ve had a great response from the public,” he said, adding that the business has served well over 1,000 pet owners.
“Justin and Alisa Carney provide a much-needed service for pet owners at their greatest time of need,” said SBA’s Maine District Director Amy Bassett in a media release. “Afterlife Affections has achieved success by continually demonstrating compassion and understanding.”
“All our customers come to us full of grief, mourning the loss of their pet,” Carney said. “We are able to endure this daily grief by knowing that we are helping them take the first step in the healing process. We use the following Irish quote by Richard Puz on the bottom of our invoices “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.”
The Carneys were nominated for the award by Josh Nadeau, Maine Small Business Development Center director at the Northern Maine Development Commission in Caribou. The family business will be honored be honored at the 2017 SBA Small Business Awards Celebration on May 15 in Freeport.
