Writing a pet dedication: words for a memorial portrait

A dedication is the handful of words that goes with a memorial portrait: a name, a pair of years and a line that could only belong to one animal. This page explains where a dedication can go, what to put in it, and how to write it when grief makes words hard to find. It uses real inscriptions from the last 200 years as models, from Lord Byron's monument to his dog in 1808 to pet cemetery headstones in London and New York. For the other steps toward a memorial portrait, start with the main guide to pet memorial portraits.

Where a dedication goes

A dedication needs a place to live. With a framed art print, the usual places are a small card tucked into the back of the frame, a label on the backing board, or a small engraved plate fixed to the wall or the frame below the picture. Purrealism prints come in four sizes, from 8 × 10 to 24 × 36 inches, and the size you choose sets how much room there is around the portrait.

With a digital download, the portrait has no frame. The words can go in the message you send when you share the file with family, on the first page of a photo album, or on a printed card kept in a memory box with the collar and tags. A family spread across several cities can each keep the same image and the same line.

The place decides the length. A card inside a frame can hold a short paragraph. A plate below a picture holds one or two lines. A caption under a shared image works best as a single sentence.

Why writing helps

Writing about a pet who has died is a step that veterinary schools suggest to grieving owners. The University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine lists several kinds of writing among its ways to memorialize a pet: poetry, a farewell letter, a list of the things you loved about the pet, a list of the things you will miss, and an obituary. It also suggests asking family and friends who knew the pet to write down something they remember.

The Colorado State University Veterinary Health System gives similar ideas. It suggests journaling, writing a letter to the pet, writing an obituary, and writing stories or poetry. If the loss was sudden, it suggests a letter telling the pet all the things you did not get the chance to say. Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine also suggests writing a letter to your pet, and the Ohio State University Veterinary Medical Center suggests a journal of your pet's story: how, when and where you met, its nicknames, what you love most and what you will miss most.

Those longer pieces are private. A dedication is public, and it is short. One way to write one is to write the long version first and then choose one line from it.

The three parts of a short dedication

A short dedication can carry three things.

The name

Use the name the family used. If the pet had a formal name and a house name, you can use both, with the house name in quotation marks. Newcastle University reports that when family surnames first appeared on British pet gravestones, some owners put them in brackets or quotation marks. After the Second World War, surnames on pet graves became more common. If your cat was "Pepper Singh" to your family, you can write it that way.

The years

Write the first year, the word "to", and the last year: "2011 to 2026". The word is easier to read than a dash on a small card or plate. If you adopted an older pet and do not know when it was born, use the year it came home, and say so: "Home with us 2018 to 2026".

There are older ways to do it. Byron's monument gives Boatswain's birth month and his exact date of death: born at Newfoundland in May 1803, died at Newstead Abbey on 18 November 1808. You can also give an age instead of dates, such as "aged 14 years", if the age means more to your family than the calendar.

One true detail

This is the part that makes the dedication belong to one animal. Think about a habit, a sound or a place: the dog who met every car at the gate, the cat who slept in the laundry basket. Ask each person in the family for the first thing they picture. Pick the detail that most people name.

What old inscriptions can teach

People have written words for dead animals for a long time. The table gathers real examples. Each one shows a different way to write.

Byron's words come from a prose inscription on the monument, printed in The Works of Lord Byron. Dash's epitaph, quoted by the Victorian Web, ends by speaking to anyone who passes: "READER, if you would live beloved and die regretted, profit by the example of DASH". Historic Environment Scotland records the full inscription on the Greyfriars Bobby fountain: in 1858 the dog followed the remains of his master to Greyfriars churchyard and stayed near the spot until his death in 1872.

The two Hyde Park stones come from The Royal Parks. It says Lord Petrie's dog Tappy died in 1892, and that Zoe, who belonged to the Barned family, died the same year. The Hartsdale line comes from a Voice of America report on America's oldest working pet cemetery. It was written for a cat called Boots, and the same report quotes two other stones: "A truer friend we never had" and "Our beloved queen".

The poet Matthew Arnold (1822 to 1888) wrote a whole poem, "Geist's Grave", for a dachshund buried in a garden under a stone. Its last lines picture strangers who will one day read the stone and learn the name of "The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend." A long poem will not fit on a card, but the idea behind it works for any dedication: write for someone who never met the pet.

How pet inscriptions changed

The words people choose for a pet say something about their time. According to Newcastle University, the archaeologist Dr Eric Tourigny recorded more than 1,000 animal headstones at four British pet cemeteries, from their founding in the 1880s to the 1980s. The sites were Hyde Park in London, the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals cemetery in Ilford, and Jesmond Dene and Northumberland Park in Newcastle.

He found three patterns:

• Friend to family. Victorian stones more often called pets companions or friends. Later burials treated the animals as family members, and family words increased after the Second World War.
• Hope of meeting again. Few 19th century stones mention an afterlife, although some "hope" to see the pet again. By the middle of the 20th century, a larger share said the owners were waiting to be reunited.
• Death as sleep. Throughout the whole period, stones described death as a kind of sleep.

None of these is right or wrong for your dedication. Use the words that match what your family believes and how it spoke about the pet.

Writing it, step by step

1. Gather memories. Make the two lists the University of Florida suggests: what you loved about the pet and what you will miss. Ask others to add to them.
2. Choose the detail. Circle the one memory that appears most often, or the one that makes people smile.
3. Write three versions. Write one line, two lines and four lines. Compare them before you choose.
4. Read it aloud. A dedication that sounds right spoken is easy to read on a wall.
5. Check the facts. Check the spelling of the name, the years and any place names. Engraved words are hard to change.
6. Fit it to the space. Match the length to the card, the plate or the caption.

Example dedications

These examples are for pets we made up. They show the three parts at different lengths.

One line: "Biscuit, 2011 to 2026. First to the door, every time."

Two lines: "Juniper, 2014 to 2026. She kept the sunny chair warm for all of us."

With a royal touch: "Her Majesty Pepper, Queen of the Back Garden, 2010 to 2025." A playful title suits a portrait that already shows the pet in a crown or a turban, such as the Maharaja or the Maharani styles in the gallery.

Four lines, for a card: "Bruno. 2009 to 2024. He walked the river path with us for fifteen years, and he always found the stick we threw."

Writing with children

Children can take part in the words. The Ohio State University Veterinary Medical Center encourages parents to let children honour a pet in their own way, including by writing or sharing memories. A child's line can be plain and exact: "He liked cheese and the blue ball." That kind of line can go on the card beside the adult one. Our page on helping children grieve a pet covers what children understand at each age.

Putting words and picture together

The words and the portrait are made at different times. Choose the photo first, since it decides which age of the pet the portrait shows. Our page on choosing a photo for a memorial portrait explains how. Then write a dedication that matches that age. A line about a puppy's first snow sits oddly under a portrait of a grey old dog.

If you plan to give the portrait on a special day, write the words early, while you still have time to show them to family. Our page on pet loss anniversaries has ideas for those days. The portrait studio takes one photo of up to 5 MB and offers the 15 royal styles, and the dedication writer further down this page turns your pet's name, years and favourite things into short lines you can copy and change.