When James and Carol Smith came home from a birthday party last month, they found their beloved collie, Mikie, lying on his side, dead.

It was 7:30 on a Saturday night, and they weren't sure what to do. Carol Smith remembered a sign on Pitman Funeral Home in Wentzville that said "pet receiving."

They called the 24-hour phone number, and the man who answered said he would be there in half an hour.

"He was professionally dressed, with a notebook of urns and inscriptions, and he was very sympathetic," said Carol Smith, 59, of Wentzville. "He placed Mikie on a stretcher, covered him with a blanket, put him in his van and took him to the funeral parlor for us."

The treatment was dignified and caring, the Smiths said, appropriate for a 9-year-old dog they thought of as their "baby."

"To be able to call somebody and have them come over and help us with this kind of a trauma was wonderful," she said.

Pitman is one of at least two metro area funeral homes to provide final arrangements not only for man but also man's best friend. It's an expansion that industry experts say has become a trend in the last two years.

Baue Funeral Homes will open a pet "tribute center" and cemetery Tuesday on about three acres next to its St. Charles Memorial Gardens and mortuary.

Last week, Lisa Baue, her son John Devaney and employee Phil Zehms were putting the finishing touches on their new venture while their dogs, Lucy, Player and Muñeca sniffed and played among the comfortable furnishings.

"This goes with what we do: It's serving people when they lose someone they love, and people love their pets," she said.

The 7,000-square-foot facility includes a "reflection room" where owners can say their final goodbyes and borrow books with titles such as "Pawprints in the Stars" and "Good Grief: Finding Peace after Pet Loss."

The "arrangement room" offers a variety of urns and containers to choose from as well as other keepsakes, such as jewelry made from a pet's paw print or nose print. The center includes a "tribute room" with pet-friendly carpet squares where owners can conduct a viewing or ceremony and even bring other pets. Baue also said a member of the clergy might offer the "Prayer of St. Francis," or someone could recite the "Rainbow Bridge" pet loss poem.

"Pet people are really tied to their animals, and they go through all the stages of grief," she said.

According to the American Pet Products Association, 62 percent of U.S. households own a pet. Spending on them is estimated to reach $47.7 billion this year.

Pitman said requests from customers prompted him to add a separate building with a pet crematory to the plans for his copper-domed, 22,000-square-foot funeral center. Since the center's opening last fall, he has cremated more than 500 dogs, cats, birds and rabbits.

Baue will serve owners within a 35-mile radius. Pitman has picked up the remains of animals from St. Louis County to Montgomery County.

"People come to us because the Pitman name is trusted in the funeral industry, the pet owners know where their pet is being taken for cremation and that the remains they are getting back are their pet, plus the time of return is quicker," he said.

Usually a pet's cremains are returned within a week, but owners can wait at the facility while their pet is cremated, about a five-hour process.

The price varies by provider, the size of the pet and the extent of the services rendered, but services for a small animal would typically run between $75 and $300.

Doyle Shugart, a member of the board of directors for the International Association of Pet Cemeteries & Crematories, said attendees at the group's annual convention the last two years have included about 10 representatives of human funeral homes.

"It can be kind of a slow process when a human funeral business brings the pets in because some people will think it's a great idea, and others won't like it," he said.

That's why it's important for funeral homes to know the community they are serving, said Jessica Koth, spokeswoman for the National Funeral Directors Association.

Baue and Pitman said they are sensitive to the fact that not everyone is a pet lover. They stressed that pets are handled in separate facilities. Baue said Missouri law restricts pets from being buried in cemeteries for people.

Bob Herr, who owns Sunset Hill Funeral Home and Cemetery in Edwardsville, has taken a different approach because the law is not as restrictive in Illinois, he says. He has created a separate area of his human cemetery called the Garden of Faithful Friends.

Herr said about 45 pets are interred there, and he is considering converting a building on his property into a pet crematory. He's also mulling another idea — creating a section where pets and people could be buried together.

"If I had a section that was set aside for that and people knew when they purchased in that section that this would be possible, I'd see no problem with it whatsoever," Herr said.

Koth said funeral homes branching out into pet service makes sense because directors can use skills similar to those used to help people cope with human death.

"Pet services have the potential to be a profit center for funeral homes," she said.

Baue said when pet owners deal with the death of an animal, it brings up all the same feelings they have when they lose a person.

Carol Smith keeps the cremains of Mikie in a curio cabinet in her living room. They're in a maple box adorned with Mikie's photo and the dates of his birth and death.

"We have one more rescue dog, a Doberman pinscher named Rudy, that is even older than Mikie, and when he goes, we're going to call the funeral home again," she said.