Accessories for Logan

I asked Logan if he wanted to blog today, but he decided that he'd rather take a nap. It's the first day in a couple of weeks that it's just the two of us this morning, so the house is quiet and peaceful right now. Smart dog. Anyway, I'll do the blogging this morning. We wanted to share some accessories we've gotten for him on Etsy. You can't dress up a big dog (or you shouldn't anyway) like you can one of those little purse dogs, but you can accessorize them with collars and bandanas. Logan hasn't tried on a bandana yet, but earlier last month I ordered him a couple of collars off of Etsy to give them a try.

Now if you look in the Pets section of Etsy and click Collar, you will find over 16,000 options. Some of these can be narrowed down further as I obviously wasn't looking for Cat, Feminine, or Small Dog, but you're still left with a lot of choices. I decided to base my choice of seller on the dogs they had in their pictures and/or mentioned in their shop info. It's not a perfect method, but my reasoning is that when someone Logan's size or bigger (he's 45 pounds now, by the way) has a "SQUIRREL!!!" moment when we're on walkies on a busy street, there's a lot more stress being put on a collar than when a purse dog has a "squirrel" moment. (For one thing, purse dogs don't even use capital letters, let alone exclamation points.) Now I'm not saying that someone who raises wee, little dogs and makes collars isn't making good collars, but for my purposes, knowing that a collar maker is using their collars on big dogs tells me that the collars can handle the strain of a big dog trying to chase a squirrel when he reaches the end of his leash. So I started looking through shops and settled on two different sellers to start with.

The collar at the top is from Fairy Tail Collars, based in Phoenix. It has a nylon webbing construction with a ribbon sewn on top and quick release buckle. The pattern is the Burberry Stripe and Logan wears it when he's feeling preppy. All the ends are well finished and the collar is well made. If you look through the shop, you will see that she has a pit bull wearing the collars. (She also has greyhounds modeling her collars because she does Martingale types as well. Dogs with heads close to the same size as their necks need a Martingale type collar - if your dog is built like this, you probably already know you need this type of collar.)

The collar at the bottom of the picture is from Gone Doggie, based in North Carolina. It has a nylon webbing core and is then wrapped and finished in fabric (you can't see the webbing core, but you can feel it). This pattern is the Kaffe Fassett Purple (and she has one more in Large). Logan wears it when he's feeling artistic. Again, it's very well finished and well made. The seller has big dogs who wear these collars and everything is sewn on an industrial sewing machine. Logan was actually wearing this collar on walkies one day when he spazzed out (not sure what happened exactly - my guess is a brief possession or possibly gas - he settled down after about 30 seconds of crazy). The collar held and didn't slip loose on him.

One other thing we got from Etsy is Logan's tag. If you look at the top collar (that's what he's wearing right now), you will see the silver dog tag shaped tag (the orange one is his rabies tag). I flipped it over because I didn't care to share phone numbers with the Internets, but on the right side is Logan's name, a tiny cute bone stamp and the house phone number and my cell phone number. We got it from Make Your Dog Smile, based in Montana. It was a custom listing based on this tag (you can see the little bone stamp on the listing - cute isn't it). We asked for just a single dog tag rather than the more authentic military double tag that she offers in the listing because with his rabies tag already on his collar, we figured a single dog tag would make plenty of noise. We went for the dog tag shape because Wolverine (AKA Logan) wears dog tags, but the seller has a huge range of shapes and offers the tags in aluminum, brass and copper. We also got a swivel clip for his tags which makes changing collars much easier when his neck grows and as his crazy Mom adds to his collar wardrobe. The funny thing with the swivel clip is that it makes his tags hang a bit longer than they otherwise would. Logan was not happy when we put tags on his collar because he's very sneaky (seriously, he makes no noise moving around). Luckily for Logan, the tags are just long enough with the clip that he can catch them in his mouth if he holds his head just right and he can go "Stealth." It's very funny because being a retriever, once he gets something in his mouth, he starts prancing because he's so proud of himself, so several times a day we have a very proud, prancing, stealth dog around here. He might not be quite right in the head.