Gross out? (You Can Do It).

Buddy, a cocker spaniel, looks the picture of health with his lustrous coat and manicured paws. But, sadly, he's dead. Rather than part with his beloved pal, Buddy's owner had him freeze-dried--a technique usually used to preserve food.

How do you freeze-dry a dead dog? "First you shampoo it and spray it with bug repellent to keep away carpet beetles and moths," says Joe Kulis, a taxidermist (specialist in the lifelike preservation of dead animals). Next, Kulis removes the innards and replaces them with a straw-like filling used to stuff furniture. Then he pops in glass eyeballs. "Real eyes are about 90 percent water," Kulis says. "The freezing process would evaporate the water and turn them opaque" Then he poses the pet (most popular request: curled up) and places it in a -17.7 [degrees] C (0 [degrees] F) freezer until it turns rock solid--about 24 hours. Finally, he puts the pet into a double-chamber vacuum, which converts ice crystals to gas (sublimation), and sucks out remaining moisture in the pet's tissue. Total time it takes to keep Buddy forever: about four months.