Losing a dog is an incredibly difficult and heartbreaking time for any owner, and choosing what to do with their remains can be hard. While many pet parents prefer to cremate them, some people decide to bury their loved ones in the garden.
One man has been criticised online for burying his girlfriend's dead dog in his mum's garden - without her permission. He has been warned that it's illegal to trespass other people's property.
But it's not just his actions that are sparking fury - his mum's response came as a shock to many Reddit users, as she insisted that he must "dig up the dog" and have it cremated instead.
The Reddit user wrote in his post: "My mum took a two-month vacation across Southeast Asia during which my girlfriend's dog died.
"I asked my girlfriend what we should do with the body but she was not taking it well and she didn't know. So I texted my mum asking if I could bury the dog in her garden."
He didn't hear back from his mum for several hours, so he decided to go ahead and bury the pet outside as he "didn't want a dead dog stinking up his apartment".
Then a few days later, his mum finally opened his text message and wasn't happy at all that he'd gone ahead with it.
"She told me I wasn't allowed to do it and when I said I already did it, she demanded I dig up the dog and pay money to have it cremated," he explained.
"I told her that would cost money I didn't have and that she should let me leave the dog in the ground. I told her I wasn't asking for much."
His mum furiously lashed out at him and called him ungrateful, but he told her that it's "her problem now".
The man added: "I don't think it's unreasonable for a son who doesn't have a yard to expect his mother to let him use her yard when he needs it."
The post received mixed responses but the majority of people believed the son was in the wrong for trespassing someone else's property.
"Adults are not entitled to other adults' property, even if it's their parents'," one person commented.
"Also there are services for this! You can go to a vet's office. You can see if there's a pet cemetery nearby."
"You can't just bury an animal in someone's yard and call it a day," another agreed.
"If you didn't have money for cremation, you should have taken it to the woods and let it return to nature."
A third said: "In a lot of places this is illegal and now your mum, as the homeowner, is responsible for the risks that come with improperly disposing of the dogs body on her property."
Many users thought it was an issue that he went ahead without his mother's permission.
"Not saying no isn't a yes," someone put, while another said: "You asked, but then went ahead and did it before you got an answer."
Though one Redditor suggested that he should have buried the dog without asking to avoid the backlash.
"The right way to handle this would have been to NOT ask, bury the dog," they wrote.
"Be sure to replace the grass over the hole you dig. Pick an out-of-the-way spot and fill in the hole well enough that it's not so obvious that you dug a hole there.
"Chances are, mum would never know the dead dog is there. If it is dug up later, she would likely assume that a previous land owner buried it there."
Despite his actions not going down well, others were concerned about his mother's reaction to dig up the dog's dead body.
"I think I'm more disturbed that the mother wants him to dig up a decaying dead dog that's already been there a couple days," someone said.
Another put: "At this point it is probably not sanitary for you to dig up the dog's body and have it cremated, but you owe your mom whatever it costs for her to have the corpse removed from her yard by professionals.
"Like what if she wanted to put an in-ground pool or something?"
What would you do in this situation? Let us know in the comments.