Small black paw print tattoo on the inner wrist of a raised hand, with a silver bracelet and rings nearby.

Paw print on inner wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small paw print tattoo sits on the inner wrist of a raised hand, shown in solid black ink with defined pads and toes. The print is the only tattoo in view and stands out against the pale skin. The hand wears silver bracelets, rings and purple nail polish, against a soft grey, out-of-focus background.

Forearm Paw print Paw Animal Wrist Bracelet Ring

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brig Marigold left Hull with forty men, a cook who sang badly, and a black dog called Tansy who belonged to nobody. She slept on the coils of rope by the galley hatch and ate what the cook threw her, which was most of the time the cook's own share. When fog came down in the third week, the captain said a dog was bad luck at sea, and the bosun said a dog was the only creature aboard who never lied about the weather.

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On the night the Marigold struck the Shoal of Wenna, the lamps went out and the water came up through the hold like a held breath let go. Men shouted for the boats. Nobody could see the stern for the spray. Tansy trotted down the wet planks to the bow and pressed each foot into the tar that had been spilled there that afternoon, then trotted back, then down again, leaving a line of black prints the width of a coin.

The bosun followed those prints in the dark with his hand on the rail. They led him to the one rope that still held the longboat, and then the men followed them over the reef where the sea ran shallow and the sand would take the weight of a boot. Forty-one came ashore at Gallow Cove. Tansy did not. The prints ended at the tide line, neat and deep, as if she had stepped off into the air.

Every spring after, the fishwives of Gallow Cove marked the first step of the year on their doorsteps with a dab of tar, one small pad and four toes, and said nothing to the minister about it. The bosun's granddaughter still does it. Her father says that if you walk the shingle at low water you will find prints that are not yours, going out to sea, and that they are always going the right way.