Why I Started Making Stone Memorial Vessels

Abby wasn't supposed to be ours.

She was a German Shepherd at a Los Angeles shelter, and when we went to visit, she escaped her pen and came to find us. That was it. We didn't choose Abby — she chose us.

We had her for about ten years. She was impossibly smart, the kind of dog who watched you open the trash can, filed it away, and helped herself while you were out. She once opened the front door of our apartment. She was always three steps ahead of us and she knew it.

What she wanted most was just to be wherever we were. That's a German Shepherd thing — that devotion that makes you feel like the most important person in the room, every single day.

When Abby got cancer and it spread, we had to make the call no pet owner is ever ready to make. We chose to do it at home, away from the vet's office — the one place she'd always hated. It was the right decision. It was peaceful, and it felt like the best way to send her off. If you're ever in that position and you can do it at home, I'd encourage you to look into it.

After she was gone we kept her remains in the small wooden box the crematorium provided. For a while it just sat in a drawer. We moved around a lot for work, and I didn't want to scatter her ashes somewhere and then leave her behind when we moved again. So the box stayed with us, drawer to drawer, apartment to apartment.

Then we moved again recently and I was unpacking and came across it. And I thought — she deserves better than a drawer.

I went looking online for something to put her ashes in. Something that felt right for our home. What I found was memorial products — dog-shaped urns, shrine-like displays, things covered in paw prints and angel wings. Nothing wrong with any of that, it's just not us. I didn't want a shrine to Abby. I wanted an object. Something I could look at every day and feel her presence without it being a constant reminder of loss. Something for me, not a monument to her.

I couldn't find what I was looking for, so I made it.

That first stone vessel sat on my desk and something shifted. Abby was no longer in a drawer. She was just — there. Part of the room. Part of the day. That's all I'd wanted.

That's why KAPLA Art exists. Not to memorialize pets in the traditional sense, but to make objects worthy of holding them. Something you'd want in your home not because it reminds you of grief, but because it's beautiful and it's theirs.

Abby — we called her Monkey Butt, and yes, that's exactly what we engraved on the base — is on my desk right now. I see her every morning.

That's enough.