This is how it was done where I worked. If you asked for ashes, we just went and scooped out an appropriate amount of ash.

Sometimes the animal was still just sitting in the burn pile (we only burned on certain days). Also the ‘cremation’ furnace was just a modified 50gal drum. So you had to cut up any of the larger dogs. Small animals (kittens or anything smaller than a regular sized cat) we just threw in the dumpster.

As you can imagine, that job sucked.