Good morning to Leo. A memorial portrait in pencil of a true lion of a dog.
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This year we were delighted when Freddie and Joey decided they wanted to start writing a blog. Their perspective on our life and business has been invaluable! We hope that you have enjoyed them and before he went to the Bridge, Joey was able to collaborate with Freddie one last time.
In this last blog, Jimmydog’s Chief Canine Officers Freddie and Joey take a moment to explain to their dog and cat friends why they should be immortalized in a custom portrait. And they know just the guy to paint it!
Once again, we’d like to speak directly to the dogs—and also the cats—in our audience. We’ll give you wonderful people a moment to fetch your beloved pets and put them in front of the screen. Then you can step away while the four-legged folk talk for a few minutes. May we recommend you use this time to fix your pets a tasty snack?
Woof! Woof! Meow! Meow! (Dogs, you may have to translate for your cat siblings. We’re not fluent in feline.)
We’ve brought you together to share an important message. As the risk of sounding like self-help gurus, you are a glorious animal. Even if you’re a popular breed, there is no other dog or cat exactly like you in the entire world. You have those soulful, wise eyes and those quirky ears. Your nose is downright adorable. And don’t get us started on that tail—so much personality in that tail! (Yes, cats, we know we’re not telling you anything you didn’t already know about yourselves.)
We bet your people take tons of photos of you on that phone thing they carry around and check obsessively. They can’t help themselves. You are so cute, so entertaining. But, really, don’t you deserve more than a photo stored on a phone?
Sure you do. You deserve more. Friends, you deserve to be immortalized in a portrait—a custom painted portrait. A portrait captures not only your physical splendor but also your unique spirit. All the best people have their portraits painted—presidents, queens, even comedian Stephen Colbert.
And we happen to know the perfect person to paint yours. Our person Todd Belcher is an amazing artist who devotes his time and talent to painting custom portraits. He paints all sorts of subjects, but dogs and cats are among his very favorites. He’s painted several portraits of us over the years and, not to brag, we look great in them.
The best part is that you don’t have to do anything—there’s no going to his studio and sitting for hours while he gets the color of your fur just right. (What busy pet has time for that?) Todd paints portraits from photos and, as we talked about earlier, we know your people have taken plenty of you already.
Portraits of presidents and queens often hang in public galleries and museums (Colbert displayed his on the set of his “Colbert Report” TV show). But the portraits Todd paints are so good that people want to keep them close, hanging them in their own houses. They look great in living rooms, dens, home offices and even bedrooms.
Your people can choose the size of the portrait, whether they want you captured in colorful acrylics or classic black-and-white pencil, and even pick the background. Our other excellent person, Stephanie Belcher, will work with your pet parents to answer all their questions and get the portrait scheduled. She’s very nice and helpful.
So, here’s the plan. Before you run off to finish your bone project or curl up for a nap, use your paw to click on this link. It will take you right to Jimmydog’s “How to Commission Your Custom Portrait” page. Now, invite your people back to the computer and tell them you have something really important to show them.
http://jimmydog.com/index.php?top=cp&second=Commission%20a%20Portrait
Yours in dogness,
Freddie & Joey
  Jimmydog’s Chief Canine Officers Freddie and Joey have been on a roll, writing a short series of blogs about the all-important topic of dog walks. In the third and final installment of the miniseries, they speak directly to their canine friends about some matters of etiquette.
We love the people who read our blogs, but right now we’d like to speak directly to the dogs in our audience about the very important topic of walking. Woof! Woof! As best we can tell, people don’t recognize the fact that it’s really the dogs taking them for a walk. They like to think they are the ones in charge. That’s fine. Let them believe that. But just because you’re actually the one in control of the walk doesn’t give you the right to be a jerk. So, we wanted to give you a few tips for walking more happily with your pet parents. But before we get into that: A key purpose of any walk is catching up with the other dogs in your neighborhood or the regulars at your park, and we’ve got some ideas for doing that more effectively, too. To start with, make sure you get a big drink of water before you head out. You don’t know how long you might be walking. If you’re lucky, it will be a long, long time, maybe 42 days or—even better—27 minutes. (OK, so we’re not really good with time and clocks and calendars and stuff.) The point is, you want enough water in your system to be able to leave lots of messages for other dogs. We’ve all had the experience—usually near the end of the walk—of really wanting to add something to the conversation at the base of the crepe myrtle and discovering you don’t have anything to, uh, contribute. It’s the worst! Ask your person to carry extra water in case you need to fill up midway through your outing. And now here are those ideas for walking more happily with your people: Even worse, if you make a habit of pulling, your person might make you wear one of those ridiculous-looking halters or harnesses. Your person will tell you that you look cute in it. Trust us: You don’t. So, keep your cool. That juicy groundhog will still be there. We all know they don’t move that quickly anyway. * Heel—to keep them happy. Not all pet parents care about things like making you stop and sit before you cross every street or are obsessed with heeling—you know, that thing where, because of some insecurity deep inside themselves, they want you to walk right next to them at all times. But if your people are into these things, we recommend just going along and doing it. Throw them a bone, so to speak. It will make your people happy and, for that reason alone, it’s worth it. They do so much for you. After all, these are the same people who pick up your poop and carry it around in a little bag. Sure, as dogs, we enjoy sampling poop but we’re not going to carry it around the neighborhood in a baggie. That’s either a sign of love or craziness and we love our people too much to think they are crazy. So, heel. Sit. Do whatever they ask. Yours in dogness, |
(Part of an occasional series of blogs by Jimmydog Design’s Chief Canine Officers. In this installment, Freddie and Joey delve into walking etiquette and explain the safe and polite way for people to introduce themselves to dogs who are out enjoying their daily stroll.)
In our last blog, we wrote about how important it is for dogs and their people to take a daily walk. If there were 10 Commandments for dogs, “Take a walk” would be the very first one. (Oh, 10 Commandments for dogs. That’s a good idea for a blog! But we digress.)
Not to brag, but we are dog walk experts. We have gone on at least one walk every day for nearly our entire lives. We asked our people to help us figure out how many walks that is and it’s a big number: something like 3,800, which is way more than 4—the number of paws we each have, the number of creatures in our family pack and really the biggest number we ever needed to use before today.
Most days, we have excellent walks. But some days, things go wrong and a lot of those times the things go wrong because of people—not because people are bad but because they don’t always understand dogs, even if they are pet parents of dogs themselves.
So, we thought we’d explain some things from a dog’s perspective—’cause that’s the only one we have—that will make walks safer and more fun for everyone.
The most important thing people should remember when they come across a dog out for a walk is that not all dogs are interested in meeting new people. We know this seems weird because of the whole “man’s best friend thing,” but some dogs are shy and some are just busy doing other things. As nice as you might be, if we are in mole-vole killing mode, we aren’t interested in making friends. We have exterminating to do!
If you want to make friends with a dog, the polite—and safe—thing to do is to ask the dog’s person if it’s OK. And then you should listen for the person’s answer before you do any more things!
We, for instance, often feel shy. We like people to say “hi” to us from a distance and then we all can go about our business. It can take a long, long time before we feel comfortable having new people pet us— like a couple of years. Seriously.
If a dog’s person says “yes,” you can walk slowly toward the dog. Be calm. Don’t move too quickly or talk too loudly. Remember, we really don’t know what all those words coming out of your mouth mean. You might think you’re being nice while we might think you are a crazed dog killer. (Really, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.)
Even if our person says it’s OK, watch us before you start petting our heads or offering us treats. If our ears are up, our heads are held high and our tails are wagging, we’re ready to mingle. If our ears are back, our fur is standing up, our tails are tucked under and our legs are stiff, we might be thinking about biting you. Hard.
This is all especially important if you are one of those younger, smaller people called children—or if you are an adult who is responsible for children.
Those younger, smaller people can be very cute and they are often covered in various crumbs and stains that are very, very tasty to dogs. But they also move erratically and sometimes screech in a way that really hurts our ears. One of our cousin dogs is terrified of all the younger, smaller people—and if those younger, smaller people happen to be playing with balls or riding on anything with wheels, he has a complete meltdown and his person has to take him home, where he has a nap to recover from the stress of it all.
So, the next time you see us at the park, give us a big wave and say “hi” and we’ll wag our tails back at you—from a distance.
Next up: The last part of our dog walking series—Dog walk etiquette—Lessons for dogs.
Yours in dogness,
Freddie & Joey
Jimmydog wishes Todd a very happy birthday! This is what he and the chief canine officers wish they were doing today. Not quite warm enough yet – but soon!
Meet beautiful Grace. A gorgeous sheltie from Hickory, NC. A holiday gift from a loving sister-in-law.
No amount of time will erase the memory of a good dog.
This week, Jimmydog is happy to welcome our God dog, Clooney as temporary floor manager. He’ll be keeping us all in line for the next couple of days.
The third in a series of occasional blogs by Jimmydog’s Chief Canine Officers Freddie and Joey.
There’s almost nothing Jimmydog’s Chief Canine Officers Freddie and Joey love more than to go for a walk. In their latest blog or dlog as they call them, they explain the finer points of their daily habit (and they mean daily!) and encourage you and your dog to hit the trails, too!
At the risk of offending some of you very nice people reading this, there is no dumber question to ask a dog than: “Do you want to go for a walk?”
Never, in the history of dogs, has the answer to that question been no.
It doesn’t matter if it’s really cold out. Or if it’s really hot out. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining. In fact, if it’s snowing, we like an extra-long walk. It doesn’t matter if our arthritis is acting up or we just got home from a 5-mile hike and could use a little nap.
Do we want to go for a walk? Yes! Yes! Yes!
As senior dogs, there are days when we don’t feel well enough for a very long walk. But even then, we WANT to go!
Since we were mere pups, we have taken our person Todd Belcher for a walk every day—every single day—no matter what. (Have we mentioned that Todd is the best person ever?) When the weather is especially nice, we take a second walk. And if Stephanie—our other best person ever—has time, we take her along, too. Those are the best walks—when our whole pack goes together.
We have heard that not all dogs go for a walk every day. We can’t believe this is true. It’s too sad to even consider.
Our walks almost always start with our other favorite activity—riding in the car. We like to get out of the city and explore the walking and hiking trails of nice big parks in our county. Our favorites are Horizons Park and Triad Park. The car seems to decide which one we visit. (It’s bossy like that.) But that’s fine with us. We like the surprise. Oh, smell! We’re at Horizons today!
We realize not everyone can visit parks every day. That’s OK. Your walks can start right outside your front door: All you need is a dog and a leash. (The leash helps the dog make sure he doesn’t lose track of you. We have noticed that people are prone to wandering off.)
Dogs are meant to walk. Our ancestors traveled long distances every day looking for food. Thankfully, as modern dogs, we don’t have to search for our next meal–it just appears in the bowl. Magic!
So, our walks are a chance for us to stretch our muscles, get the blood pumping, breathe fresh air and clear our heads. (We might look like we’re just lying around much of the time, but we are thinking BIG THOUGHTS, like, Could we learn magic and make food appear in the bowl all day long?)
Todd uses our walks to clear his head too. And when Stephanie comes, we talk about all sorts of important dog and people things. It’s a big family bonding time for all of us.
As dogs, we’re actually quite chatty and leave a lot of messages for the other animals: “Stay away! This is my tree!” or “You smell cute. Leave me your address!” We don’t know why people waste time with all those Facetweets and Twitterbooks—pee is so much simpler.
When we have time, we do a bit of hunting, always on the lookout for one of the biggest menaces of all time: moles. Or maybe they’re voles. Really, it hardly matters. They are both creepy, creepy little things that have no place in a respectable park. A quick snap of the jaw and good riddance mole. (Vole?!)
We love walks so much that we’re going to write a couple more of these blogs about them. Next up: Dog walk etiquette—Lessons for people. (We’ve got some stuff we really need to teach you!)
Yours in dogness,
Freddie & Joey
(The second in an occasional series of blogs by Chief Canine Officers Freddie and Joey)
As much as Todd would love to invite all his portrait subjects into his studio to sit for their sketches and paintings, it’s not practical.A cat might have time to lie around in a patch of sun streaming through the window for hours (and hours and hours), but dogs like us have things to do.We’re busy canines.
Todd paints custom portraits—of dogs, cats, people, horses, roosters,whatever—from photographs. Trust us, he can create some pretty amazing portraits from not-so-amazing images, but we think it’s nice when he gets to start with some awesome photos.
We know not everyone is as natural in front of the camera as we are—we’ve been photographed and painted practically since we were pups. So,we’d like to take this opportunity to talk to the dogs, cats, people, horses, roosters and whatevers out there about how to pose perfectly for photos—the ones that Todd will use to immortalize you in acrylic or pencil.
Meet Lola, a spunky Terrier from California who looks so cute with her favorite toy!
* Get ready for your close-up. Todd likes to work from at least one photo that clearly shows your face: He’s known for capturing the soul of his subjects through their eyes. If you’re an animal of shorter stature, have the person holding the camera get down to your level. Look squarely ahead and give a nice smile. For dogs, a classic head tilt never hurts. (We don’t know what works for roosters, but we encourage all the fowl to give the head tilt a try, too.)
* Look natural.It can help to think about someone you love. If you’re a cat, that might be your person—or, more likely, yourself. If you’re a person, it might be your spouse or child. If you’re a horse, it might be the very nice lady who grooms you and brings you apples.
Lola loves hanging out in her backyard.
* Be creative. A photo taken in the living room or back yard is often perfect, but if you love the dog park, the hay meadow next door or a nearby lake, head out there. You’ll look happy in a place you feel comfortable.
A great shot showing Lola’s beautiful coloring.
* Be prolific. It’s best to give Todd several photos to work from—an assortment conveys a sense of your personality and inspires a perfect composition for your custom portrait. (You don’t think a photographer shoots just one picture for the cover of Bark! or Vogue and calls it a day, do you?) Try a variety of standing and sitting poses. Get some profile and even action shots. Catch that Frisbee! Play with that yarn! More the sedentary type? Curl up with your best friend by the fire or lounge on the sofa.
* Skip the Instagram filters. You’ve got a gorgeous coat (or hairdo or feathers or mane or maybe even scales) and Todd will want to capture that in all its natural glory. If the photos you submit were taken at different times and in different lighting conditions, have someone with thumbs write a note indicating which one most accurately shows your coloring.
A better shot of Lola on her patio. Could be the perfect background for her portrait!
* Consider the background. If you think you look quite fetching (Ha! We’re punny!) in one picture but the background is ugly, that’s OK. Todd is a master of creating perfect backgrounds. You can suggest an idea or have him paint one of his signature looks—a colorful and dynamic contemporary design that we think sets off furry pets,in particular, perfectly.
And the final portrait. Lola on the bed with her favorite toy was the best pose, but the patio where she loved hanging out was the perfect background. Todd was able to composite it all together from all the supplied photos.
* Don’t worry. If you have any questions, call (336-201-7475) or email (todd@jimmydog.com) our people. They can answer any of your questions about photos for custom portraits—or most anything else. They are really smart. Just don’t ask for us. We’re working on our latest bone project. (Todd and Stephanie aren’t the only creative ones in our pack!)
http://jimmydog.com/index.php?top=cp
Yours in dogness,
Freddie & Joey