Collar Her

Dogger needed a new collar. I went and looked at collars online. And then I went and checked my bank balance and I learned that I could either make my house payment or buy a new collar but not both. I was sad. Dogger was sad. We were all sad.

I decided to try a little experiment. I had this:

*celebrety impersonator. Not the actual collar

The collar was a spare that I ran across when I was going through a bag of Dogger stuff, I’m guessing that the collar was one I must have bought some time ago, before I decided that Dogger was a pink collar kind of girl and no other color collar would do.


and I had this:



I found the ribbon on sale and couldn’t leave it at the store. It was cheap, it was pink and it was festooned with daisies. Dogger needed this ribbon.

Dogger has a mini wardrobe of collars. She has the very nice one my parents found for her and the less nice one I got for her. The one I got for her is showing it’s age and the people at the park don’t seem to think it is as cute as her other one . That of course is besides the point. When I bath Dogger (once a week) I also launder all her bedding as well as her collar. I need two collars for her. One to wash and one to wear. One is always standing by. This system also keeps the collars from getting too worn out. How does a dog manage to wear out a collar? She wears it all the time and she spends a lot of time at the dog park. Stuff happens. And Dogger is a girl dog and sometimes she just wants a change.

Okay. I have an old collar that needs replacement and I have a new collar that is the wrong color and I have this super cool ribbon of the right color. A plane began to hatch.

I don’t sew. I don’t know anyone with a butch enough sewing machine to sew the ribbon onto the collar. I thought about calling the place I took my winter coat to for repair last year, but they are more clothing specific and most clothing is thinner than the collar and I have the feeling that they would ask me to go buy the heavy gauge needle they would need to do it and if I wanted to go buy a heavy gauge needle for it I would by my Mom a heavy gauge needle for her machine and I would cut out the middleman all together. I needed another choice.

I needed Shoe Repair. Shoes are thick! People take their shoes places to be repaired! I could take my collar and my ribbon to a shoe repair and they could do it. Great Idea. But. Where are the shoe repair places? I remember back when your neighborhood shoe store routinely repaired shoes( remember those? Back when we had neighborhood anything? Ah, Messina Shoes. I miss you. Andy Burks’ Dad would have sewn that ribbon to the collar...) Anyway. I looked up shoe repair places and found a handful nearish to me. The first place I tried was out of business, the second place would do it but it wasn’t as close to me as I would want. Place number three was the winner. Close by, and they didn’t laugh when I explained what I needed. I went in Friday after work and by Saturday afternoon I had the collar.



Pretty!

It did run me some dollars, a few more dollars then I had been expecting it to run, but still far fewer dollars than I saw quoted for the same thing online. Large pink collars don’t run cheap and you pay for pretty. Local Raleigh readers, if you need your shoes worked on or ribbon sewn to a dog collar, Man Mur Shoes on Hillsburgh across from the University, does a great job and they are nice folks. Only draw back would be that they are the Nordstrom of shoe repair (very high quality, excellent service) and the next time I do this, I'm going to try for maybe the Target of shoe repair.