For anyone who might be interested in a pet memorial, I found this site after my sweet girl Dee Dee lost her fight with liver failure on July 9th. I had been looking for something nice back when I had to have our beagle, Hambone, PTS in Feb of last year and couldn't find anything I really liked. These folks are new and do laser etching in granite. I just got mine this week so I don't know how long it will hold up outside, thankfully, I haven't had any experience having to pick out human grave markers so I can't compare this etching with those. They also do pet portraits and all kinds of neat pictures in a thin granite that is framed. They do a thin stone that fits into the front of a wooden box for a cremated pet. They also do personalized garden markers, Robert sent me pic of one they'd done when I mentioned that I was a gardener too and was working on a Memorial Garden.
You can actually go on their site, and upload your photo, crop it and put in the name, dates and wording (limited to 100 characters) and see what it will look like before you order it. I'm going to order 2 more next week and the verse I want to use on 1 more than the 100 characters (like 120 or so) so I emailed them and they can take the wording by email and use your other info from the online order thing. It's kind of expensive (for me anyway) the 8" x 12" x 2" memorial stone with shipping is $139.90.
I did have 1 problem with my first order. They wrap the stone in bubble wrap and then put into tight fitting box, wrap that in bubble wrap and mail in the $9.95 flat rate Priority Mail box. My first one came with a crack in the corner, but the Priority Mail box was wet and really beat up. They were horrified and shipped me a new one the very next day and sent it with their box packed in peanuts in a large box and they absorbed the extra $10 it cost to ship, which I though was admirable.
Here's a photo of Dee Dee's memorial. I had to take a side shot because the flash reflected off of the surface in a head-on shot. The stone looks solid black when viewed in person.
Here's a link to the site: http://www.laserpals.com/
Disclaimer: I don't know these people personally and don't get any benefit from anyone else using them and I can only vouch for the item that I received. I just thought it was such a nice stone and we don't have any were close around here that does this kind of stuff, this small. The grave stone places around here only do big stones.
Vicki
