This animal cemetery in Delaware is asking bereaved owners to dig up their pets' dead bodies

Pet owners who buried their cats and dogs in the now-defunct Delaware SPCA cemetery in Stanton have been instructed that they need to remove headstones and exhume remains by the end of the month as the sale of the property is negotiated.

"This is going to be a heartbreaking nightmare," one pet owner told USA Today.

The Delaware SPCA closed its doors on Friday, and according to a Facebook post made last month, it is consolidating its services and resources by moving to Sussex County — leading to confusion over the fate of its half-century-old cemetery. Despite another Facebook post instructing pet owners to exhume and relocate their pets' bodies, at least one person was chased away when she went to collect the remains of her childhood poodle and grandmother's Boston bulldog. "I don't know what the plan is. Nobody knows anything," Linda Cohan of Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, said.

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Pet cemeteries are not regulated by Delaware because animal remains are considered "solid waste." Some evidence indicates that at one point a human owner's ashes were buried alongside her pet in the cemetery, although Delaware SPCA attorney Geoffrey R. Johnson called such claims "absurd."

Some owners' contracts guarantee "continued use and upkeep of the grade site for the period of 25 years," so the Delaware SPCA has said that customers can "collect a refund on their contract if they so desire. Any gravestones not collected at the time of sale of the property will be collected and a memorial will be created in Georgetown." According to the Delaware SPCA, the last pet was buried on the grounds over a decade ago.

But Patti Flinn, who laid her Cocker Spaniel to rest in the cemetery in 1991, says she will fight because her contract indicates the plot's term limit is "perpetual care." "Unbelievable…[The reason] you to to a pet cemetery is you always have a place to go back to," Flinn said.