PETS ASHES BANG INTO THE SKIES AT AUSTRALIA’S FIREWORKS FUNERAL

 
SYDNEY, Australia -  Warren Blackwell held onto the ashes of his beloved canine companion Gypsy for eight years, never able to find the right place or occasion to celebrate her life.

"I've never been able to part with them, I've never been able to come up with anything that was suitable to do with them that would make me happy," he said. 

The smart, loyal Staffordshire bull terrier was hit by a car when she was just four years old, shortly after Blackwell moved to the city from the countryside, a horrifying moment he said compounded his need to give her a proper farewell.

"I was giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and I tried to get her to the hospital, to the vet, but she didn't make it," he said.

"I didn't want something that was all about her death. I wanted it to be about her life." 
So Blackwell didn't think twice when friend Craig Hull, a trained circus performer and pyrotechnician asked whether he'd like to send Gypsy off in style, as the first customer of his fireworks funeral firm, Ashes to Ashes.

"When Craig suggested this I said 'mate I want to be first cab off the rank'," he told AFP, watching the sun set over the glittering waters of Sydney Harbour -- soon to be Gypsy's final resting place.

"I've seen the shell, and I've seen her go into the tube over there, she's over there waiting. I know she's going to make a loud bang, that much I'm sure of."

The Ashes to Ashes story began almost three years ago when Hull's two beloved dogs, German shepherd-Akita cross Zeus and Gyprock, a white labrador-cattle dog cross, died, leaving a "big hole" in the performer's life.

He'd already scattered the ashes of a friend during an aerial routine at an opening ceremony for one of the Olympics -- he won't say which -- and felt his dogs deserved something even more spectacular.

Source: The Sun Daily...More...