This Thursday our oldest dog will be leaving us. This is my wife’s dog, but we have had him for 16 years now. I would like to make a mold of his paws for a future project for my wife, but I’m not sure what to do it in. He can’t stand for long, and won’t tolerate people touching his feet as of late.
I don’t know how much your dog weighs, and that might come in to play, but it strikes me the easiest might be to put a pan of mud/sand near the water bowl he normally uses and let him walk up. Kinda like taking a forensic casting, you’d have to do a plaster right in the dirt and then reverse it if you want a traditional one…
Of course, that assumes he weighs enough to put an imprint in wet soil or sand.
If you have to actually press his paw, it might be easier to use (and might be worth trying anyway, but I envision the animal being shy about stepping in) casting plaster.
There are also probably 100 “in between” things you could try, like a cup with wallboard joint compound, and 99 other things I’m not thinking of…
Hopefully someone will have done something like this before, but I figured I’d through my ideas into the mix.
Good luck with it!
PS you could do the mud thing, and then cut the actual soil up and put it into a clear cast…
When, I lost my last dog, the vet who performed the procedure provided me his paw print in a clay tablet. It might be worth talking to @JohnK or @Nathan_Jones about getting some clay to make the imprint and having them fire it for you.
@Val_Curry thoughts?
I have a two part mold making mix but still that would need you to push his paw into the mixture.
Could you ask the vet to facilitate that after he’s passed? I could see it pushed into alginate but I’m sure neither of you will have emotional needs instead of worrying about this.
The video that Jast posted is a good idea, but I’d suggest two additional things:
1: Before rolling it out, make sure to knead/work the Sculpey or Fimo until it’s warm and soft. That way, there’s less pressure required to make an impression in it.
2: From personal experience, I’ve found my dogs to be a lot more patient with being handled if there’s a pepperoni involved. Depending on how skittish he is about his paws at this point, you might be able to just pet him to distract him while you do it, or you may need to put a muzzle on him while you’re taking the impression. Dogs are naturally stoic, but it sounds like he might have some arthritis in his feet.
As Wanderson and Uglyknees mentioned, it might be easier to have the vet or one of the techs take the impression. I certainly understand if you’d rather be the one to do it, though.
I’ll try to post pics of the attempt when it’s done. She has no idea I’m doing this, and the end product will be a set of walking stones for the back yard with his prints in them. I’ve got the sculpti iii, and the attempt will be tonight.
I’m going to bring up some dental agnate to the space tonight if you are around. It might help and it might not but I want to try to help you if at all possible. My heart goes out to you.
We used to use that Crayola moldable clay stuff they sell in stores at a clinic I worked in. It worked OK and I believe it was fireable. The biggest issue with it was sometimes the sides would crack but a nail file brought them back nicely.
At my current one we just use an ink pad, but I’ll try to find out for you what we used at A&M. That stuff worked great and was for sure able to be fired (and subsequently decorated). Probably just a clay of some sort. This looks markedly like what we used.
the agnate may be the best since its soft but may take too long for him to wait for. if we can get a soft mold quickly we can just remold later from a cast of the soft one for a more permanent solution
Well Charlie passed away at 10:45 am quietly yesterday in his mother’s arms. Due to his arthritis, he didn’t like his paws being messed with so it took about an hour to get paw prints that actually looked like dog prints.
But as promised, here’s the results fresh after the imprint. I’ll updated a pic of the cured product when I get a chance.