Pet Blessing Ceremony On Mount Royal Today

There's an article in Canada's Gazette about priest Horace Baugh, who is now 90 years old and has been giving blessings to pets since 1951. It's a good read.

By the way, the article says he blessed "dogs, cats, gerbils, and white rats" during the first ceremony on October 4th, 1951, but gerbils were probably not present until one of the later ceremonies. This is because gerbils weren't kept as pets until later. I'm not sure when gerbils made their way to Canada, but they first came to the U.S. for laboratory research in 1954 and weren't kept as pets until several years later.

In the article, Baugh says that he has probably blessed approximately 60,000 pets in his lifetime. These include not only dogs and cats but also pets such as gerbils and lizards. He even blessed a pet skunk once.

If you live near Mount Royal, you can have your pet blessed today, too. Baugh's pet blessing ceremony will begin at 3:00 at Beaver Lake on Mount Royal.