Skip navigation

Tag Archives: dogs

I make! Sharpie tie dye edition (2)

Remember this from last week?  It’s ok if you don’t.  There has been an abnormal amount of posts between then and now.

Last week, we played with permanent markers and isopropyl alcohol and managed to tie dye some cloth.  Not t-shirts.  Because can’t imagine the girls wearing tie dye t-shirts on a regular basis.  And thus, we transformed those very colorful pieces of cloth into these!

The stuffed milk carton is a cell phone charm, which is attached to a cell phone, which is in the bag.

This one ended up being sewn by another counselor-like person because the kiddo wasn't able to make it.

And this one is mine, which was the sample.

You’ll note that there were four pieces of cloth from last time and only three bags shown.  That’s because one of the girls suffered a quite a few technical difficulties and wasn’t quite able to finish her bag.  But instead of opting to let me whip it up for her, she decided she would  finish it on her own as she was starting to feel more comfortable with the sewing machine toward the end.  Good for her.

I had the girls follow Tally’s instructions for her lined dice bags and you can find a well-written tutorial on her site.  The lining we used was more of the same cloth we had tie dyed (but not dyed, of course).  As for mine, I made a couple of modifications. But first, a story.

I have been thinking about starting Yaris on clicker training (or really just training her in general).  I’ve been terribly lax about her education and I don’t really want her to grow up to be a heathen.  I haven’t really had the time to train her like I had with Choco.  So, while Yaris is quite smart, she’s wasting all that smart on things like getting people to play with her or how to best dig a trench in the backyard (she actually hasn’t dug any trenches in a long time).  Well, it’s time to change that, but in order to entice her to learn new things, I need a bag of treats.  The treats I can handle.  I make my own training treats and I’ll probably post the recipe sometime in the future.  The bag part wasn’t working.  They were too expensive for what I wanted to do, or too ugly, or too large, or too small, or had too many extra things I didn’t want…it just wasn’t what I was looking for.  So, I made my own.

Enter my modification(s):

It actually isn’t much of a modification.  I just made two smaller tubes of cloth, flipped them inside out, and then sewed them in at step 7 from the tutorial.  Actually, that’s what I had meant to do but I had forgotten until I had almost finished.  Good thing I am friends with the seam ripper.  I have two loops because I was uncertain about weight distribution when I was sewing this up.  With two loops, I can either hook the carabiner through both loops or just one depending on how many treats are in the bag.  And a carabiner works for me because I am almost always wearing a belt.  You can take a look at all the other treat bags on the market for ideas if you don’t want a carabiner.

The other modification was also minor.  I recently came into possession of a Crop-a-dile eyelet and punch setter and I wanted to try it out.  So in place of the buttonhole for the ribbon, I used two 3/16″ eyelets side by side.  I don’t have a picture of it, sorry.  It works just fine in case you can’t figure out how to use your buttonhole foot on your sewing machine.  You may want to put an extra liner where the eyelets are though.  Depending on how loose a weave your cloth is, it may rip and fray.

So, I am now in possession of one very colorful treat bag.  I kind of matches Yaris’ personality and I’m sure it’ll make all the other dogs jealous.  I’m sure.

No pet for you

Before I got Yaris, I looked into adopting a rescue dog.  It seemed like the thing to do.  There are dogs out there that need a home and I have a home that needs a dog.  Seems like the very logical and a good match.  On top of that, I’ve raised several dogs so there won’t really be any surprises for me, unlike with first-time dog owners.  I really didn’t think it would be much of a problem.

Well…it was.  I really wanted a GSD and the two GSD rescue operations in my area were…really snotty.  They wouldn’t answer emails, phone calls…basically, they wouldn’t acknowledge you.  Finally, I just resorted to filling out their posted application form and sending it straight to one of the employees.  I never got a reply.  And those application questions are DETAILED.  Why do they need so much detail?  Yes, they need to know that the dogs are going to responsible owners but do they really need to interrogate you?

But maybe they were just really busy.  Extremely busy.  The busiest.  So busy that they couldn’t even set an auto-reply about how my application was being considered and they would get back to me at a later date.

I thought maybe it was just a one-off experience.  Perhaps I was just unlucky and contacted all the super busy, snotty people.  Apparently not.  One of my co-workers said she also got that treatment when she tried to adopt a dog.  She is also an experienced pet owner.  And I recently came across this article.  It seems like this is almost the norm for pet rescue agencies.

So, the question is this: why are you rescuing pets?  A lot of the mission statements say that the agency rescues pets so that they can be adopted by loving families.  And yet, it doesn’t seem like they allow any family to adopt the pets.  I cannot understand this at all.  I think rescue agencies are heading the way of PETA (here is what I think of PETA).

Btw, did you know the ASPCA sided with Ellen DeGeneres when that whole situation about her adopted rescue blew up?  At least someone has their head on straight.