Choosing the Colour of Their Keychain

Almost nothing about the day a pet dies is a choice. It happens to you. The vet's schedule, the crematorium's route, the weight bracket, the two-week wait for ashes — none of it is yours to decide.

The colour of the keychain is.

Why we ask

The paw print keychain that comes with every cremation we arrange holds a small lock of your pet's fur. It comes in ten colours, and we ask which one you want before anything else.

Partly that is practical. But mostly it is because being asked a question you can actually answer, on a day when nothing else is within your control, does something. People take longer over it than you would expect. They come back an hour later having changed their mind. That is the point.

The ten

Yellow, red, pink, orange, green, blue, purple, black, white and brown.

There is no premium colour and no upgrade. They cost the same because they are the same object.

How people usually choose

Their collar. The most common answer by a distance. You have been looking at that colour every day for a decade and it will read as theirs immediately.

Their blanket, or their bed. The thing they slept on. For a lot of people this lands harder than the collar does.

Their coat. Brown for a ridgeback, black for a labrador, white for a westie. Straightforward, and it works.

A colour that has nothing to do with them. Their favourite tennis ball. The lead you always used. The colour of the room they lay in at the end. One family chose yellow because that was the colour of the sunlight in the spot on the floor she always found.

The one you keep looking at. If you have gone back to a colour three times, that is your answer. Do not overthink it.

If more than one person is grieving

Ask everyone, and if there is disagreement, take extras. We charge at cost for additional keychains, and a household where two people each carry one is generally a happier household than one where somebody was overruled.

Children in particular often have a strong and immediate view. It is worth asking them.

If you cannot decide

Then do not, yet. Tell us to hold it and come back when you know. There is no deadline on this and we would rather send the right one late than the wrong one on time.

If you genuinely have no view and would like it decided, we default to the colour of their collar if you tell us what it was.

And if you want to change it later

Say so. We will make another one. It is a small thing and we would rather do it than have you look at a colour that turned out to be wrong.