Elderly people love their cats and dogs and numerous studies show that the geriatric crowd benefits from having pets.  In reduces their blood pressure and it's a win-win for both the old person and the dog. 

Today, a surviving spouse will often live alone in the last years of their lives, and singleton geriatrics are commonplace.  Nobody likes to talk about it, but if you die unexpectedly and your dogs has no long term food supply, you can expect to have your body eaten by Fido.

Don't become a dog treat

It's not that uncommon to have your corpse eaten by your pets, sadly, it happens every day. 

Even famous people risk being eaten by their pets after they die.  For example, famous aviatrix Pancho Barnes was eaten by her pets and crapped out on her nice new carpet. 

Your dogs may love you now, but even the most precious puppy is going to eat your face if you don't feed them.  In Pancho's case her dogs were starving several days after she died:

Don't risk becoming dog treat for Rover

This is a real risk for the surviving spouse or anybody who must die alone. In Pancho Barnes case, the reports say that her dogs were found starving and her body was eaten by "numerous starving dogs". 

These dogs would only be starving after dismembering her and picking every tidbit of meat from her corpse, licking her eyeballs from their sockets and crushing her bones to extract the marow.

I am become crap, the destroyer of carpets

The old saying goes "Die young and leave a good looking corpse", but elderly people need to have a plan in-place if they die quickly and don't have daily visitors.  Nobody wants their final resting place to be a steaming pile on the carpet.

Don't let this be your final resting place

One reason that having your body eaten by dogs is a real problem because a dog will literally eat dog food until they pop, so you can't leave out a weeks supply of dog food until the mailman smells your decomposing body.  Being found dead is embarrassing enough without having your body found strewn around your house in heaps of dried dog poo.

Even a dog that is not starving will nibble at your dead face as a snack, and the problem is not just isolated to dogs.  There are reports of dead old ladies being eaten by their house cats.

"Much of 58-year-old Livia Melinte was nibbled by her pets after she died weeks ago."

"Authorities in Ohio say they found a dismembered body inside a house with three dogs, which had been eating the remains. A dog warden says body parts were "all over the place."

 In sum, the best defense against being eaten by your pets is to live with someone, or have somebody pop-in every day to find your corpse before Fido gets hingry.