This funeral director is Fido's cinder fella.

• Position: Pet Cremation and Burial Services in Raleigh - Brief Article

In 28 years in the business, Dave Wujastyk figures he has arranged more than 5,000 funerals of people. Now he wants to bury that part of his career in favor of dead pets.

In July, Wujastyk opened Pet Cremation and Burial Services in Raleigh for people intent on honoring their cats, dogs, birds and other pets. But not horses. They're too big for his crematory, a steel oven lined with fire bricks that can bum 75 pounds of remains an hour.

Until this year, Wujastyk, 47, had never cremated a pet, but he has had an undying interest in funeral homes. He did something about it in 1972 after his family moved from Chicago to Winter Park, Fla., to operate a Quality Inn. The owner of Mitchell Funeral Home gave him a tour and, the next year, hired him to mow the lawn and wash funeral cars. He later helped embalm corpses and plan funerals.

In 1977, he enrolled in Gupton-Jones College of Mortuary Science in Atlanta for training that allowed him to become certified in Florida as an embalmer and a funeral director. He returned to Winter Park arid worked 15 years for Ott-Laughlin Funeral Home. From 1992 until 1997, he managed the motel for his parents. He and a partner started a funeral home in 1997, but he sold his interest a year later when First Union Corp. transferred his wife, Natalie, to Raleigh.

He got a job as a funeral director for Cremation...