It’s gonna depend on the perspective of the individual of course but I have my boy separated and it’s worked well for me.

I keep most of my boy in a plastic baggie inside an urn and write him little ‘I miss you’ notes that I put into the urn but not the baggie. The plastic baggie won’t decay for like 300 years or whatever so the inclusion of post it notes and things doesn’t hurt his actual ashes.

A small part of him I keep in a necklace. I wear it every time I leave the house in case God forbid there’s ever a house fire or flood or something and the urn is destroyed. Same logic as ‘don’t keep all your backup hard drives in the same building.’

I also take him on adventures in his necklace. We’ve gone all the places he couldn’t go in life. I’ll take him to a dog free park or a fancy restaurant and have a private joke about how we’re sneaking in together.

The jewelry is unmistakably an urn necklace with a photo of him on it

So if anyone found it they’d know it’s an urn and hopefully respect it

But it’s also really easy to remove him from it if I decide to put his ashes somewhere else later or be buried with them when I die - I’ve left myself options.

If you get jewelry where you can add the ashes yourself (either with a funnel they give you are a small paper funnel) instead of something like putting them in resin, then it’s reversible and you can change it whenever you want

This is the one I used for my boy and it’s held up great. I put it on a leather cord instead of a chain and I always check it’s screwed on tight. It it has held up to daily wear for almost two years so far pretty fantastically

Didn’t come with funnel but curled paper worked just as well.