Solid black paw print tattoo on the upper back near the shoulder, seen in a mirror photo of a person in a grey striped top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Paw print tattoo on a shoulder

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black paw print with four toe pads and a larger main pad sits on the upper back near the shoulder blade. The ink is dense and filled, with slightly softer edges and a few lighter patches on the upper toe. The photograph is taken from behind at an angle, showing a grey striped top, dark hair and a phone held at the top left against a dim background.

Shoulder Paw print Paw Animal print

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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

Mind the step by the chandlery, because that's where Tom Rowe's dog walked into the history books, and nobody in Porthgwidden has let him forget it. The dog was a black lurcher called Moss, long in the leg and short on sense, and every morning she went down the slipway ahead of the boats as if she owned the tide.

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The winter the council relaid the quay, the concrete men poured a new step outside the Ship Inn and left it to set overnight under a sheet of tarpaulin. Moss got under the tarp before anyone could stop her. Next morning the foreman found one clean print pressed into the grey, four toe pads and a heel as big as a boot, and he swore at it, then swore at the dog, then went and fetched his wife to see.

Mrs Penhallow, who ran the post office and had opinions on everything, said the step had been waiting for it. The foreman wanted it chiselled out. Tom said he'd pay for a new step himself if they left this one be, and the foreman, who had a soft spot for lurchers, agreed on one condition: that Tom stood there every day at low water and told anyone who asked how the mark got there.

Tom did, for eleven years. The tide came over the quay twice a day and washed the rest of the town clean, but the print stayed, dark where the rain pooled in it. When Moss was gone, the children still stopped to press their own hands beside hers, and the step, nobody could say why, always looked as if it was waiting for someone to come back down the slipway and lead the way.