# Eleven years, and what you choose to put on it

> Years after losing a pet, some people want a number and a date and nothing else. Others want the animal drawn, happy, wings and all. Both are right — the mistake is not choosing.

August 18, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/pet-loss-anniversary

`11`, large and plain, centred on the chest. Beneath it, much smaller, `04.09.2015`. Nothing
else — no paw print, no heart, no wings, no animal at all.

That's one true version of this shirt, eleven years on. It isn't the only one.

## What are the two ways to mark it?

Say everything, or say almost nothing — both work, for different people.

One register is the plain one shown here: a count of years and the date it started from, and
nothing pictured. The other is the familiar iconography people reach for around pet loss — the
animal drawn, a paw print, wings, a rainbow, the dog looking straight out looking entirely fine.
Neither is a compromise version of the other. They're different answers to the same question,
and the right one depends on the person, not on the year that's elapsed.

## Why might someone want nothing pictured?

Because by the eleventh year, the anniversary isn't something they're explaining to anyone.

A bare number and a date are legible to the person they belong to and opaque to a stranger, a
colleague, a bus queue. For somebody whose grief has become private and settled rather than
current, that's exactly the register they want — a fact worn quietly, checked by nobody but them.

## Why might someone want the animal drawn?

Because wanting to look down and see your dog is not a lesser way of grieving.

Plenty of people want the opposite of privacy here: the actual animal, drawn well, doing what it
used to do, or rendered happy in whatever way that person pictures it — wings, a bridge, a favourite
old expression. Saying it out loud, in a picture other people can see, is for a lot of people the
whole point of making anything at all.

### Both are still true at year eleven

Nothing about the passage of time makes one version more correct than the other. Some people's
grief goes quiet; some people's stays exactly as visual as it was in year one, and both are simply
how that person relates to the animal they lost. The same fork sits under other anniversaries too —
[a sobriety count faces the identical choice between a private number and an open
one](/stories/sober-anniversary-shirt), and there too neither answer is the right one on
its own.

## How is this different from the shirt made right after?

Timing, not register.

[A memorial made in the days after a death](/stories/pet-memorial-shirt) is usually a
portrait made to hold onto a face while the loss is raw and specific — a likeness, sometimes a
name, sometimes dates either side of a life. This shirt exists at a different distance from the
same event, and either register — bare number or full portrait — can still be exactly right that
much later. What changes over years isn't which one is allowed; it's simply that plenty of people's
preference shifts, and some people's doesn't.

## Does this need anyone's permission?

Only if it borrows a specific image rather than describing your own animal freshly.

The common motifs — a paw print, a rainbow, wings — belong to no one; they're a shared visual
vocabulary anybody can draw from. What isn't free to lift is a particular illustrator's finished
artwork or a specific piece of memorial stock art. Describing your own animal and how you picture
it clears that easily, because the drawing gets made fresh rather than copied.

## What's the actual mistake here?

Making it to somebody else's taste instead of the wearer's, or refusing to pick a register at all.

A shirt that hedges — half a number, half an icon, neither committed — reads as unresolved because
it is. And if this is being bought as a gift, the version that lands is the one that matches how
that person actually grieves, not the one the giver would have chosen for themselves. Asking
*"would you want him drawn, or would you rather it just be private?"* is a fair question to put to
somebody, and the answer decides the whole design.

## Does it print well?

Both versions, for different reasons.

The plain register is the simplest chest print there is: one large numeral in one ink, enormous
contrast, nothing for the fabric's weave to blur, with the date line small and well separated
beneath it so it reads as a quieter second line rather than a caption. Charcoal, deep green,
oxblood and washed black all suit it, one ink throughout.

The depicted register needs the same discipline any illustrated design does —
[flat colour and a limited palette hold up better than a soft, gradient-heavy
scene](/stories/limited-palette-prints-better), so a happy dog, wings and all, still reads
as a clean print rather than a picture glued onto fabric.

## How do I get one made?

Describe it at [JustOG](/) — the number and date if that's the register, or the animal and how you
picture it if it isn't. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real
garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Whichever one you make, it's still true on the twelfth year, and the one after that.