Pet urns, keepsakes and memorials

After an individual cremation, your pet’s ashes are returned to you. There’s no right way to remember a pet. These are some of the choices owners make.

Types of urn and casket

• Scatter tubes: simple cardboard tubes, often biodegradable, designed for scattering ashes.
• Wooden caskets: often with a name plate or engraving. PDSA notes that you can often choose a casket and an engraving when you arrange individual cremation through your vet (PDSA).
• Ceramic, stone or metal urns: for keeping ashes at home.
• Biodegradable urns: designed to be buried, sometimes with a tree or plant.
• Photo urns and frames: with space for a photograph.

Many crematoria include a simple container in the price and offer other urns at extra cost. You can also buy an urn separately later. Our price guide has questions to ask about what’s included.

Keepsakes

Blue Cross suggests several ways to remember your pet, including asking for a lock of fur or a paw print from the vet or crematorium, holding a small ceremony, making a scrapbook, or setting up a little memorial corner with a photo and their collar (Blue Cross: saying goodbye to your dog).

Ask for a paw print or fur clipping before the cremation, as it can’t be done afterwards.

Scattering or burying ashes

Some owners scatter their pet’s ashes on a favourite walk or in the garden. Others bury the ashes or keep them at home. If you’d like to scatter ashes on land that isn’t yours, it’s courteous to ask the landowner first.

Remembering your pet

Grief can take time. PDSA has advice on coping with the loss of a pet, and you’ll find free support services on our pet loss support page.