What to Do with Pet Ashes: 7 Ways to Memorialize

There is no single right answer to what to do with your pet’s ashes, and that is exactly what makes the decision so hard. The crematorium hands you a small, surprisingly heavy container, and then the question sits there — sometimes for months — because every option feels too small for the animal you lost.

Below are the seven choices we actually see families make, roughly in the order they consider them. Five of them keep the ashes close. One gives them a place. One does both at once, which is why so many people arrive at it in the end.

1. Keep them at home, in an urn or a keepsake

By far the most common answer, and a good one. A sealed urn on a shelf keeps the ashes where you can see them, and after the cremation itself there is nothing more to pay. Two practical points: the vessel needs to be airtight, because humidity is what damages cremains over the years, and it should stand somewhere you actually spend your evenings. A cupboard is storage, not a memorial.

2. Scatter them somewhere the two of you loved

The morning walk, the beach, the garden of the house you lived in together. It is the option people describe most romantically and regret most often, usually for the same reason: once the ashes are gone, there is nowhere left to visit. Scattering on public land is also regulated in most countries — a national park, a sports field or a cemetery without permission can be an offence — so check before you drive anywhere. If you choose this, keep a small portion back.

3. Bury them and plant something over the spot

A memory tree or a bed of perennials turns the burial into something that keeps living, and it gives you a date every year when it comes into flower. Two things the guides usually leave out: mix the ashes into the soil around the planting hole rather than into it, because cremains are alkaline and can burn young roots, and plant in autumn or early spring so the roots establish before a hot summer. Choose a long-lived species, and avoid anything whose roots will lift a patio.

4. Have a portion set into glass, resin or jewellery

A pendant, a paperweight, a glass memorial bead. This is the option for people who move house, move country or simply want the tribute on them rather than in a room. Expect roughly $100–$400 at a specialist studio, and expect to wait a few weeks. The honest limit is size: a pendant is private. It does not make a place, and it cannot be visited by anyone else who loved the same animal.

5. Divide them between the people who loved them

When a pet has outlived one household and belonged to several people — adult children who grew up with the dog, two people who have since separated — splitting the cremains is a fair and increasingly common solution. There is nothing legally complicated about it. Most crematories will divide the ashes for you or send a splitting kit, and matched keepsake vessels run about $40–$150 each.

6. Put their name somewhere permanent

A memorial bench in the park they walked in, a plaque on a shelter wall, a kennel sponsored in their name. Nothing to store and nothing to scatter: you are paying for a place, and often for something useful at the same time. It is the right answer for families who want the tribute to outlive the immediate grief, and the wrong one if what you want is privacy.

7. Seal them inside a life-size garden sculpture

This is the option we make, and it exists because the other six each leave something out. A large cartoon sculpture of your own dog, cat or horse — 1.5 m and up, sculpted from your photographs, built in fibreglass (FRP) and hand-painted — can be made with a sealed compartment in the base that holds a portion of the ashes. Then it stands in the garden where they used to run.

It works where the alternatives do not for three reasons. It keeps the ashes, like an urn. It gives them a place, like a burial. And it adds the one thing none of the others can: a likeness. You are not visiting a generic stone with a name on it, you are visiting the animal — the head slightly too big, the ears at exactly the angle they always were, the expression that was unmistakably theirs. A cartoon-style piece usually reads more like the pet you actually lived with than a formal portrait does.

The practical side matters as much as the emotional one. Fibreglass is what makes a sculpture at this size both affordable and light enough to install without a crane, and it stands outdoors for decades with an occasional wash. Production runs eight to sixteen weeks and starts from a handful of photographs; the finish options are set out on our materials page, and if you have ever wondered whether a commission of a pet counts as art, we answered that at length in a separate piece. Finished memorial commissions are collected on the pet memorial page.

The seven options side by side

Rough costs only, for comparison. A quote is free and takes a day.

If you are not ready to decide

There is no deadline on what to do with pet ashes. Cremains keep indefinitely in a dry place, out of sunlight, and no option expires. A surprising number of the memorial sculptures we make are commissioned a year or two after the loss — and the photographs are usually better by then, because the family has had time to gather the ones that really look like the animal. Waiting costs you nothing.

When you are ready, send a photograph and we will tell you what a sculpture would look like, what it would cost and how long it would take. Free, and answered within 24 hours. Start with the memorial sculpture page or send us a quote request. If you would rather compare the objects first, our guide to choosing a pet memorial statue covers sizes, materials and budgets side by side.