Ack!

So, in the very most charming tradition of everything that can go wrong doing so, our cable internet connection is more or less non-existent at the moment. For the past week, we've had no more than a few minutes of connectivity at a time. I'm able to access my email very occasionally and receive orders in batches when the connection is live, so as far as I know there shouldn't be any serious delays in orders submitted through the website or through Raw Dog Etsy, but if you have emailed me in the last week and haven't gotten a response, please know I'm doing my best to respond to all messages as soon as possible--and please, absolutely feel free to call, my cell phone is going to be the absolute most reliable way of getting ahold of me until the issue is resolved. According to Comcast that may not be any time soon, so we've gone ahead and ordered a wireless setup and cards with which to equip all our personal and business computers. Turns out it's cheaper to do that than to pay Comcast to take care of their own installed wiring and equipment. Le sigh.

Meanwhile, we're looking forward with great excitement to the Save the Pets 5k Run/Dog Walk held at Alton Baker Park in Eugene. We'll be there bright and early; registration begins at nine and the walk begins at eleven. It's a good cause and should be a blast--if you're in the area, come by and say "hi"!

Cheers!

Shoutout for photos!

One of the big upcoming projects is a series of updates to the site. The feedback page is starting to become a bit cumbersome, and I've still got a metric ton of photos and sweet feedback notes from all you awesome folks to add to it, so we're building a whole new feedback gallery featuring your awesome Raw Dogs sporting their gear. I figure this is a good time to send out a call for photos and a reminder: if you send us photos and feedback for the site, we'll give you 10% off your next piece of Raw Dog gear!

The other perpetual deal on offer is our "Raw Dog for Life" puppy collar discount. If you buy any puppy collar and send photos and feedback, you'll get 10% off any adult collar when the pooch is done sprouting.

Quite aside from the call for content, I do fully admit that I'm a tremendous dog geek and just enjoy dog pix--I love it when people pass along photos of their hounds when placing an order, it's nice to see who I'm working for!

Recent projects:

Oh man, fun stuff in the past few weeks! I've had the honor of working on some really great projects lately. You can click any of the photos for a larger image.

First, a cool tiger-stripey collar in the LSU colors, with stripe pattern pulled directly off the side of a tiger:













Next, a couple views of a sweet embroidered name collar with nods to the first national DACA Grand Champion trophy collar.
This piece features Mason's name embroidered on black calfskin and overlaid with a frame of boar tusks. Mason's collar is built with solid brass hardware secured with brass Chicago screws, and is lined in natural buckskin. His leash is custom-built to match and features a solid brass locking livestock clasp. This is a super classy collar--embroidery takes quite some time to arrange, but it's worth the wait!












The last piece I'm hankering to show off is a pretty variation on the stars and vines pattern commissioned through Raw Dog Etsy. This is a black collar with stars and vines set in a royal-blue deerskin overlay. It's lined in an unbelievably gorgeous charcoal-gray shearling lamb.














Thanks a million to all involved! I really enjoy doing custom work--it's a real pleasure to help bring someone's perfect piece of gear to life.
Cheers! ;0)

News and stuff

Well, here we are, wrapping up an absolutely manic period of activity, and boy do we have some catching up to do!

Let's see...

First things first. In the falconry world: despite high hopes and set-teeth determination, I made several trapping attempts over the first few weekends with the hope of trapping a late 2007 passage bird, but didn't see a single juvenile in the entire Willamette valley over several weekends. By that, I mean zero. None. Shortly thereafter, the nesting period was in full-swing, and so a break was taken to allow the young nestlings to fledge and start learning to hunt.

I got a phone call from my sponsor a few weeks ago, about a crazily-colored recent fledgling near her house. I immediately threw my trapping kit in the car and flew down there to make an attempt at him. We hiked out to where she'd seen him earlier; he had swooped low over her horse, while she was out riding, so it's encouraging that he's not terribly skittish about people. We threw the trap in a little clearing near the top of the hill, moved back a bit to keep from crowding the trap, and set about looking for him. We could hear him calling, but because we're on a hill, sounds bounce and it can be really difficult to pinpoint the source of a call. Finally, after about a half-hour, he showed up in a soar out over the valley, a good three hundred feet up and circling. We know there is a pair of nesting adults in the area, but baby calls are very distinctive and frequent, and because he's so weirdly light colored, we could tell that it was the bird we were looking for.

We watched him circle and call for a few minutes, and after only a short while, he stooped the trap from the soar! This was really a cool thing to see--from that high up, waaaaaay out over the valley, he spotted the tiny little trap and made a pass at it. It seems he's still pretty naive, as he landed in a snag directly above the trap and made "mama, feed me!" calls for the next twenty minutes. He knew there was food there, but either wasn't sure what to do about it, or wasn't confident enough to take a shot at it.

We hung out for a while, and eventually my sponsor had to split for another appointment. Oregon law requires apprentices fly a bird "wild-trapped under the direct supervision of their sponsor", so I was obliged to pack it in for the day. Since then we've made several more attempts at him, but though I've tried being there at dawn, dusk, and midday, I've yet to manage to spot him again when he's actively hunting. The trapping itself isn't terribly difficult, the tricky part is being at the right spot, at the right time. But! We'll keep at it, he's only got another few weeks before he's likely to be chased from the nest site, so it's a small window I have to trap him before he lights out for other territory.

In other news, business is rockin'! Upcoming August events where you can come visit us include the Save the Pets Paws for a Cause 5k fun run and dog walk at Alton Baker Park in Eugene on August 24th, and the Dogo Argentino Club of America 2008 national specialty show in Hutto, Texas the following weekend.

That Paws for a Cause event should be a total blast--there are going to be a bunch of great local vendors there, and a sea of waggly tails. I'm also really, really looking forward to the DACA specialty--old friends, dogos, and BBQ, I am totally beside myself that we're able to arrange to go this year. We missed the 2007 specialty, but made a road trip of it the year before, and it was the best vacation we ever had. This year I'm flying in myself instead of driving, and hoping to meet up with some sweet pet boutiques in Austin while I'm there. If anyone has any good suggestions for shops to check out, I'd love to hear!

We've made some new friends this past month, so here's an official shout-out to Sid, Dorinda, and Heather at LibertyBank. There are a few major business and personal principles we here at Raw Dog hold close to heart, and after having interviewed quite a number of financial institutions with the intent of moving our business to a more commercially-oriented bank, we are awfully proud to have hooked up with this fine bunch of folks. I can't say enough how pleased I am, not only with what LibertyBank has to offer me and my business in a banking sense, but in a personal sense as well. Big things are on our horizon and they've worked awfully hard to help us make it happen. If you're in the market for a new bank, give them a call and tell them we sent you. ;0)

Everything Pawsible, Inc.

We are more than thrilled to announce that Everything Pawsitible, Inc, of Salem, Oregon has become our newest store-front retailer!

Everything Pawsitible is a really great little shop--not only a beautiful, locally- and independently-owned dog-oriented pet shop and gift boutique, but also features day care, training, and the only canine therapeutic swimming pool in this side of the state.

Aside from outstanding training and canine physical therapy services, they've got a really great array of unique dog-themed gifts with at least one item in the store featuring almost every breed. I didn't spot any dogo stuff, but it sure was neat to see things like a little pewter Ibizian hound, or a piece of art with a smooth collie--breeds you don't often see featured!

We couldn't possibly be more thrilled to be aligned with such a shop, be sure to drop by if you're in the area!

Fun projects, big things on the horizon!

I'm sitting down at the computer for a moment, taking a breather. We had a rockin' April, with a couple of really neat projects to keep us busy.

Remember those nice McNab mixes I mentioned? I had the privilege of gearing out one of the pups, named Diablo. He's got an interesting Phoenix ascending his back, and in that spirit, here's what we came up with.

The lead has a matching triskele concho on either side of the base of the handle, and green phoenix feathers coming up the handle itself on both sides that mirror and continue the line of tail feathers on the collar. We're really pleased with the set and can't wait to see Diablo filling it out!


Also, we had the pleasure of hearing from Masako and the lovely Winnie, for the building of a custom harness to match her nifty two-tone lead:


It'll take a bit of tweaking for a perfect fit, but definitely a fun project--and nets us smiling Shiba photos, which is always a nice perk.

In tangential news, we've upped production approximately 6000% in the past couple weeks, with a couple neat discoveries.
First of all, http://librivox.org is a free source for public domain recordings of public domain books. Now, I don't know about y'all, but I likes me some literature, and all the sudden here's all the Twain, Dickens, Wodehouse, and Thoreau you'll need to keep you busy for a good while. You got'cher Oscar Wilde, yer Leo Tolstoy, and yer H.G. Wells. Edgar Rice Borroughs brings us the amazing Tarzan books, there's Dr. Dolittle, Sherlock Holmes, and a hefty lot of Oz books. I'm pretty sure Mr. Armadillo is quite (Plato!) through with hearing me randomly (Tom Swift!) shouting out nice finds throughout the last week or so (Dostoyevsky!).

I love to have an audiobook running while I work. It keeps my mind busy and I love to spend an afternoon tuned into a reading while making neat things. Audiobooks are hard to come by, though. They're pricey to buy, and it's hard for me to get them back to the library on time. Plus, our little branch has a pretty dismal selection, and the good ones can be hard to get ahold of. Finding LibriVox is like I've suddenly fallen into this amazing treasure trove, I can't even adequately describe how tickled I am over the whole thing.

I've already signed up to volunteer a reading, and I've got a really neat little collection of very old children's and young adult literature that will be fun to share, most are about dogs or horses or general adventure-type stuff, pirates and shipwrecks. If you know anyone with a Scottish or English accent that would be willing to do a reading, I have copies of Bob, Son of Battle and Greyfriars Bobby that I would give a great deal to hear properly read. Bob, Son of Battle is written in the Cumbrian dialect, but I imagine any English accent is going to do it more justice than my profoundly American voice.

The other fun thing I found was an el-cheapo set of public domain TV westerns on Amazon.com. With 300 episodes of a giant array of classic TV westerns like The Lone Ranger, Annie Oakley , Sugarfoot, and Wagon Train, this has been a fun find, too.

In other news, trapping season opens the 17th and we've got big plans for the late 2007 passage red tail population of Salem, Oregon. We are hoping for (predicting?) an according sharp drop in production, briefly following ;0).

And speaking of taking the occasional Saturday off...

I woke up this morning to a frickin' winter wonderland out there. Snow! I decided on the spot it was a good Saturday to stay home and catch up on some sewing. We're a bit swamped at the moment, and have some really neat projects in the works, to boot. So, in the interest of spending a quiet weekend rockin' the Juki, see you next Saturday!