What began as a retirement project to give grieving pet owners a place to remember their beloved companions has taken an unexpected turn, with Rest Easy Friend becoming RIP for Pets.
For founder Mick, the rebrand was not part of the original plan. In fact, it was the public who effectively chose the new name for him.
When Rest Easy Friend launched, it attracted significant publicity, but Mick soon noticed a recurring problem: people were finding it difficult to understand what the service actually was.
“When I went to tell people who I was and what I was and I said Rest Easy Friend, my second line was, ‘Well, it’s like RIP.ie, but it’s for pets,’ and immediately they got it.”
The phrase “RIP for Pets” was already becoming the way people described the service.
“It really was an identity crisis that we had run into,” Mick says.
Eventually, he decided something had to change.
The first step was checking whether RIPforPets.ie was available.
Thankfully, it was.
“If RIPforPets.ie wasn’t available, it was going to be a long road home after that.”
The rebrand meant changing the website, signage, business cards, posters and other promotional material. It came at a cost, but Mick says it was necessary.
“There is expense in marketing. That’s just the nature of business.”
The decision quickly proved worthwhile, with the rebrand attracting another round of publicity.
“I can walk in anywhere and say, ‘I’m Mick from RIP for Pets.ie,’ and straight away, ‘Yes, we know of you. We’ve heard of you.’”
At its heart, RIP for Pets is an online memorial service where people can create a lasting tribute to a pet they have lost.
Owners can upload a photograph and story, while friends and family can leave messages of support. The site was deliberately designed to be simple to use, and Mick says his initial concerns about people struggling with the technology have not materialised.
“It’s as simple as registering for Amazon,” he explains. “You just go on, register, put in your password and your email, and then you get a little dashboard.”
The service has also developed in ways Mick did not initially expect.
Gift vouchers, for example, allow friends and relatives to give someone a memorial following the loss of a pet.
“I never thought at the start,” Mick admits. “You say, ‘Well, okay, the owners are going to put the tribute.’”
Instead, he discovered that the person purchasing the tribute could often be someone supporting the bereaved owner.
“All of a sudden now there’s a different kind of target market.”
Mick believes the popularity of the service reflects the changing relationship people have with their animals.
Growing up, he says, pets were often kept outside and were not considered as deeply integrated into family life as they are today.
“They weren’t really an intricate part of the family.”
Today, he says, that relationship has changed dramatically.
“They’ve moved on with their association with pets. It’s really with the family.”
He says friends and family increasingly understand the bond between owners and their animals, even if they are not pet owners themselves.
RIP for Pets also includes advice and support for people dealing with the difficult realities surrounding pet loss.
Mick says one of the hardest situations can be explaining the death of a pet to children.
“Dealing with the pet dying is one thing, but then having to go to your kids and trying to explain to your kids what happened and breaking the news to them, it’s really, really sad.”
There are also difficult decisions when an elderly or seriously ill pet has to be put to sleep.
“Do you tell the kids before you bring the pet down?” he asks. “Or do you wait until they come home from school and say, ‘Well, you know, I have some bad news for you’?”
There is no single answer, he says, because every family and every child is different. The advice section is intended simply to help people navigate those difficult moments.
One of Mick’s priorities from the beginning was that the site should remain a quiet and respectful place.
“There’s no ads on it,” he says.
“I just decided I wasn’t going to have one of these sites where you go on and all you have is flashing images and ads across you. I said, ‘That’s too tacky.’”
Instead, the focus remains firmly on the pet and the memories being shared.
Visitors can also leave what Mick calls “comfort messages”, which he personally moderates to ensure the memorial pages remain appropriate.
He recalls seeing one particularly touching contribution, a long poem written in memory of a pet.
“If somebody goes to the trouble of putting that up, I said, ‘That’s nice.’”
For Mick, these moments reinforce why the site exists.
One of the biggest differences between RIP for Pets and social media, Mick says, is permanence.
A tribute posted to Facebook or Instagram can quickly disappear beneath newer posts.
“Tomorrow morning’s breakfast is the next picture up,” he says.
But on RIP for Pets, a tribute remains available and searchable.
“If they didn’t see it, it’s gone,” he says of social media.
On the memorial site, however, visitors can search for a pet by name and return to the tribute.
“It’s a memorial where you can actually follow the pet, find the pet very easy.”
For Mick, that is what makes the service special.
“It’s an online memorial,” he says simply.
For Mick, money was never the main motivation behind RIP for Pets.
Having retired from An Garda Síochána, he describes it as a project he took on because he had the time and wanted to do something meaningful.
“I’m retired. It was just one of these projects you do.”
All services on the site will incur a fee of €25 which goes toward the upkeep.
He checks the site every day, moderates messages and looks at the new tributes as they are added.
“It’s really a retirement project more than anything else,” he says.
“It’s more of a hobby, an enjoyment hobby to me than work.”
Ultimately, Mick hopes RIP for Pets gives grieving owners a small measure of comfort.
“They’ve lost their best friend. They’re devastated. They’re gutted, and they just feel like they’d like to do something to honour their pet.”
The tribute gives them somewhere to preserve a photograph, a story and the memory of an animal that was part of their family.
“It’s a kind of a lasting memorial to the pet.”
And after months of explaining what Rest Easy Friend was, Mick can now give the simplest answer of all:
“It’s an online memorial site where people can honour their pets. And that’s as simple as that.”
To post a tribute, or purchase a gift voucher, see here.
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