They are part of the family. Their story belongs with yours.

Why make one for a pet

What you love about a pet is scattered across three phones, and the small things go first: the sound they make when you come home, the walk they insist on, the habit that makes everyone laugh. A Preserve gathers it into one place the family can read together and add to later. A birthday, an adoption anniversary, or a Tuesday night is reason enough.

What to include

• Adoption day — where you found them, what you were told, what you decided in the first ten minutes.
• The early photographs, including the blurry ones from before anyone knew how much they matter.
• The habits: what they do every morning, what they're not allowed to do and do anyway.
• Nicknames, and how each one started.
• Favorite walks and favorite places — the route, the park, the back seat, the patch of sun.
• Video, even a few seconds of it. Movement is the thing photographs can't hold.
• Sound — a bark, a purr, the noise they make at the door.
• The family stories everyone tells the same way, and the one only you remember.
• The different stages: the puppy or kitten, the middle years, the older, slower, softer version.
• What they bring into the house that wasn't there before.

Questions that get real answers

Asking someone to write "something about the dog" usually produces nothing. A specific question produces the real thing. Use these for yourself, or send them to the family and friends who love them too.

• "What does the house sound like when they're in it?"
• "What do they do that no one else's pet does?"
• "Where do they always want to go?"
• "What's the story you tell people about them first?"
• "What changes about your day because of them?"

How to start

Begin with their name and two or three memories — that's enough for something worth reading. Add photographs and a short video when you have them, and gather a memory from the family if you want other voices in it. You can keep adding later: the new trick, the first gray whisker, the summer they refused to come inside.