The house is the hardest part. Not the vet, not the drive home, but the days afterwards, when the bowl is still in the corner and you keep hearing something on the stairs. People who have not lived with an animal sometimes underestimate this, and that can make the grief feel oddly private, as though you are supposed to be over it by the weekend.
You are not, and there is no schedule for it. What follows is not a list of ways to feel better quickly. It is a list of things people actually do, in the weeks and months after a pet dies, that help them hold on to the animal rather than put them away. Some are objects. Some cost nothing. A few are small rituals that turn out to matter more than anything you can buy.
Take what suits you and leave the rest. There is no correct way to do this.
A word about timing
One thing worth knowing before you start, because it saves people a lot of regret: the practical decisions and the sentimental ones do not have to happen at the same time.
In the first days, the only things that need deciding are the ones with deadlines. Burial or cremation. Whether you want the ashes back. Whether to take a paw print, which can usually be done at the practice and only within a short window. Everything else, the frame, the photographs, where things will live, what to do with the collar, can wait weeks or months without any loss at all. Many people find the memorial easier to think about once the first wave has passed, and that is completely normal rather than a sign of indifference.
If you are reading this in the first forty eight hours, the only item below that is time sensitive is number two.
Ten ways to honor a pet who has passed
1. Give one photograph a permanent place
Most of us have hundreds of pictures and none of them printed. There is a strange weightlessness to that, and the simplest memorial of all is to choose one, have it printed properly, and put it somewhere you pass every day rather than somewhere you have to go and look.
Choose the ordinary photograph rather than the best one. Not the posed portrait from the beach, but the one of them asleep in the wrong chair with their face in the cushion. Those are the images that still feel like the animal years later. Our pet memorial frame was made for this, a solid wood frame measuring 19 by 14 centimetres with small gold hooks beneath it, so the collar or the lead can hang below the picture instead of living in a drawer.
That detail, the hooks, is the part people write to us about. Something about the lead staying where it always was makes the whole thing feel less like a shrine and more like the dog is simply out.
2. Take a paw print while you still can
This is the one with a clock on it. If your pet has died very recently, or you are facing a date you already know about, ask the practice about a paw print. Most will do a clay impression or an inkless print, and many offer it without being asked if you say you would like one.
If you would rather do it yourself at home, inkless kits use a clean wipe and reactive paper, which means nothing is pressed into the fur and there is no mess to deal with at a moment when you have no patience for mess. Our paw print keepsake frame includes the kit and the frame together, which matters more than it sounds, because loose prints in an envelope are the ones that never get mounted.
If the moment has already passed and you did not get a print, please do not add that to the list of things you are carrying. Plenty of people do not, and nothing about your love for that animal is recorded in a sheet of paper.
3. Keep a small amount of fur
A lock of fur is the most physical thing you can keep, and for many people it is the one object they reach for. A small clipping in a sealed keepsake, carried on a set of keys or kept in a bedside drawer, is portable in a way that a frame is not. Our pet fur keepsake keychain is designed for exactly that, a paw shaped case small enough to live on a keyring.
If you are reading this before the day itself, take a little more than you think you need. People almost never regret having too much.
4. Write the story down before the details go
Free, and the one thing on this list nobody ever regrets. Sit down once and write out the ordinary facts, because these are what fade first and they are oddly precious later. How they came to you. The noise they made when you came home. The food they stole and got away with. The walk you always did. The thing they were afraid of for no reason at all.
A page is enough. Date it, and put it somewhere findable. If there are children in the house, ask them to add a line in their own handwriting, which turns out to be the part everyone reads first in ten years.
5. Plant something you will have to look after
A tree, a rose, a shrub in a good pot if you do not have a garden. The appeal here is not the symbolism, which can feel a bit much in the early weeks, but the fact that it gives you something to do with your hands in the place where you would otherwise be doing nothing.
Choose a plant that suits your actual conditions rather than one that suits the sentiment, since a memorial plant that dies in its first summer is a genuinely miserable outcome. If the pet is buried in the garden, be careful about planting anything edible directly over the spot.
6. Mark the spot, even modestly
A flat engraved stone, a small slate with a name on it, a paving tile set into the grass. If your pet is buried at home, this is the difference between a patch of lawn and a place you can stand. If the ashes came back and you chose to scatter them somewhere that mattered, a small marker at home still gives you somewhere to go when the weather is bad or the place is far away.
Keep the text short. A name, and the years, is almost always enough.
7. Give to the place that would have taken them in
A donation to a rescue, a shelter, or a fund that helps people afford veterinary treatment. Many will add a name to a plaque, a wall or a yearly list, and some will send you a note saying what the money went to.
Several people have told us this helped more than any object, particularly in cases where the illness was long and expensive and the grief carried a layer of guilt about money. If that is where you are, consider this one first.
8. Commission a portrait, or draw one badly yourself
An illustrated or painted portrait moves the animal out of the photo roll and into something that has been looked at carefully by another person, which is a surprisingly large part of the comfort. Prices range from twenty for a simple digital piece to several hundred for an original painting.
One honest note. Ask to see the artist's previous work with the same species and the same colouring, because black dogs and tabby cats are genuinely difficult and the results vary. And if commissioning feels like too much, a bad drawing you did yourself at the kitchen table has its own considerable charm.
9. Keep the day in the calendar
The anniversary arrives whether you have planned for it or not, and it tends to be worse when it ambushes you. Putting it in the calendar sounds cold and does the opposite: it lets you decide in advance to do the old walk, or cook something ridiculous, or simply tell someone.
Some people prefer to mark the day the animal arrived rather than the day they died, which is often the kinder of the two dates.
10. Let the next animal be their own animal
Not a memorial exactly, though it belongs here. There is no respectful waiting period, whatever anyone tells you. Some people need a year of quiet and some need a puppy within a fortnight, and neither is a comment on the pet who died.
The only thing worth avoiding is asking a new animal to be a replacement, which is unfair to them and disappointing to you. A good sign that you are ready is when you find yourself looking forward to a different personality rather than hoping for the same one.
If there are children in the house
For most children, a family pet is their first experience of death, and what they take from it is shaped less by what you say than by whether they were allowed to take part.
- Use the real words. Died, rather than put to sleep or gone away, both of which young children take literally and which can make bedtime genuinely frightening.
- Give them a job. Choosing the photograph, drawing the picture that goes on the fridge, picking which flowers go in. Children grieve through doing.
- Let them keep something. A tag, the smaller of two toys, a tuft of fur in a tin. Children often want a physical object more urgently than adults do.
- Expect it to come back. A child can be fine for three weeks and inconsolable on a Tuesday for no visible reason. That is not a setback, it is simply how it works at that age.
What to do with the collar, the bowl and the bed
This is the question people ask most often, and the answer is that there is no rush whatsoever.
A useful middle path: put the practical things out of sight within the first few days, because tripping over a water bowl at six in the morning is its own small cruelty, but do not throw anything away for at least a few weeks. Bag the bedding and the toys, label the bag, and put it somewhere you do not have to look at it. Later you will know which items are objects and which are keepsakes, and that distinction is almost impossible to make in the first week.
The collar is usually the exception. Most people keep it, and most people want it visible rather than stored. Hanging it beneath a photograph is why we put hooks on the pet memorial frame in the first place.
Unopened food, unused beds and unworn harnesses are very welcome at most shelters, and handing them over in person is a hard but surprisingly good afternoon.
If you are supporting someone else
A short note, because the people around a grieving owner often feel useless.
Say the animal's name. It sounds small and it is the single most appreciated thing you can do, since most people avoid the name for fear of upsetting someone who is already upset. Do not open with how long they had or how old the animal was, as both tend to land as a verdict on how sad the person is entitled to be. Do not suggest another pet, not yet, not even kindly.
If you want to send something, send a photograph you took of their animal that they have never seen. It costs nothing and it is the only gift in this entire article that cannot be bought.
And if the grief seems to be going on in a way that worries you, or the person is struggling to manage daily life, it is reasonable and kind to mention that pet loss support services exist and that some people find talking to someone outside the family helps. Suggesting it is not the same as saying their grief is excessive.
Frequently asked questions
What is a pet memorial frame?
It is a frame built to hold more than a photograph. The useful versions combine the picture with somewhere for the collar, the tag or the lead to hang, so the objects that would otherwise be stored away stay part of the display. Ours is made from solid wood with small gold hooks underneath and is assembled by hand in our workshop in France.
Is it too soon to order a memorial?
Only you can answer that, but it is worth knowing that nothing is lost by waiting. The one exception is a paw print, which has to be taken within a short window. Everything else, including the frame and the photographs, can be done in a month or in a year.
Can I get a memorial for a pet who died years ago?
Yes, and a good number of our pet memorial orders are exactly that. People often reach the point of wanting something on the wall long after the event, sometimes after a move, sometimes when a new animal arrives and they want the first one to still have a place. There is no expiry date on this.
What photograph should I choose?
A picture where the animal is doing something characteristic rather than looking at the camera. Check the resolution before you print, since a photograph that looks fine on a phone can disappoint at frame size. If the only good image is an old low resolution one, a smaller print on matte paper hides a great deal.
Is it normal to grieve a pet as much as a person?
It is extremely common, and researchers who study grief have long recognised that the loss of an animal can be felt as deeply as other bereavements. The relationship is daily, physical and entirely free of conflict, which is rarer than it sounds. If the people around you do not understand it, that reflects their experience rather than the size of your loss.
One last thought
Most of the people who order a pet memorial frame from us tell us the same thing afterwards, and it is not what you would expect. They say the hardest part was choosing the photograph, and that once it was on the wall, the house felt less wrong. Not fixed, but less wrong. Grief does not need to be resolved to be given somewhere to sit.
Everything we make is cut, sanded and assembled by hand in our small workshop near Lyon, in France, which you can read about on our story page. If you would rather look at the other pieces first, including the personalized picture frame that many families use for the whole household, the full collection is here, and our decorative key holders all work the same way, with the picture above and the things you actually use hanging below.
Whatever you choose, and whether you choose anything at all, we are sorry about your animal.