Painted flash design of a raised animal paw with tan fur, dark toe beans and a dark pad patch, above a red ribbon banner reading HIGH FOUR.

Raised paw with HIGH FOUR banner

Colour · Flash

A painted illustration of a raised paw with cream and tan fur, four dark toe beans, a large dark central pad and a brown patch on the lower part of the paw. The bold red ribbon banner across the top carries the words HIGH FOUR in dark lettering. Soft watercolour-style shading gives the fur texture, and the design sits centred on a plain white background.

Paw Paw print Banner Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down by the peat, and mind the cat, for she's been waiting all week to hear this one. You'll all know the dog on the rock above Ardveg, the brindled one with the cream forepaws, who sat by the slip every morning watching for the Cormorant to come round the point. Her name was Bess, and she belonged to nobody, which is the only sort of dog worth having.

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Old Duncan Finlay had the boat then, and his boy Alasdair crewed for him every summer. Each evening when they came in, Bess would stand on the wet stones and lift her right paw, straight up, the way you'd hail a friend across the harbour. Alasdair started lifting his hand back, then the other lads did, and soon the whole island was slapping palms at a dog before the nets were dry. They called it the high four, because Bess's toes spread wide enough to meet a palm, and her fifth was a stubby thing she kept tucked away.

Then came the autumn the Cormorant didn't come round the point. The weather turned, the lads went out after her, and nobody came back for three days. Bess sat on her rock through all of it, paw raised at the empty horizon. When Alasdair finally walked up the shingle with his hand bound in rag and his face grey, she stood, lifted that paw, and waited.

He didn't slap it. He knelt and laid his good hand flat against hers, and the old folk say she held it there until the tide turned. Mind you, the Cormorant came round the point the next morning, with Duncan at the tiller, and Bess was off down the slip before anyone could stop her.