Jack The Bionic Dog

It's not often that the D-fa team is in by 7pm to watch the tele (we try to be in by 7.30 though for Coro St) and I know that tele is chewing gum for the mind, but sometimes you pick up interesting or useful little gems of information ... like how to dance a Paso, what a heel lead is (totally different to dog obedience), how to become a supermodel, and a successful restauranteur. Useful things. 

Anyway anyway, one night on Campbell live (if you're an international reader John Campbell is a funny, ernest and particularly opinionated journalist/tv presenter (lines blurred)) whose claim to fame is that he nearly made Helen Clark cry, hosts a nightly current affairs (everything from uncovering political scandal to stories of fluffy the wonder-cat qualifies as CA)show. 

This particular night featured a story of Jack, the Search and Rescue dog who has suffered terrible injuries after being hit by a car. He has basically been rebuilt from the hip joints back and despite conservative estimations from vets about the likelihood of a full recovery, is now back on active duty. 

Using the miraculous powers of the interweb, we managed to track down Jack and his handler Malcolm who are now based in a wee town in the west coast of the south island called Greymouth. Turns out, that's only a chihuahua yap (sorry small dog owners, I love them all, really I do, all creatures great and small and all that) from our spiritual home, the shed in Hokitika. Given that Jack's continued good health was kind of dependent upon him keeping fit, warm and dry as much as possible we thought some D-fa gear would do just nicely. 

So without further a-doo we packed up a few little Jack sized items and headed up the road. As if Jack wasn't enough of a furry miracle he was also electrocuted as a puppy and was pronounced dead a the vets. Fortunately everyone took a moment (15 seconds actually) to reflect on a life taken too soon, during which time Jack decided his work was not done on this earth and that he was not ready to hit the road. After the smoke cleared (he was apparently smoking a little) Jack stood up, shook himself and proceeded to recover completely. You have to hand it to those Aussies, they make em tough. 

Malcolm and Jack are pictured above modeling the new gears. Jack is the shorter one in the red jacket, Malcolm is taller and wearing the blue uniform. Mal also has opposing thumbs but you can't see them in this picture. Low and behold a few weeks after we dropped off the gear we got this email from Mal. 

Hi AJ, we have had a heap of searches recently and a couple have been in really crap weather. 

One in particular was really bad. Jack and I had been searching all day in the worst country I had searched in, and then we were hit by a really cold rain and wind storm. Jack was tired and had gone a bit flat and then I remembered the little red sack in my pack. With 'Sub-Woofer' on it was time for a break and a brew, it was freezing. When it was time to go again, Jack seemed well rested and not long after setting off up went the wind hoover and he was off. With me stumbling along behind it was not long before I heard a distant bark and a short time later I was looking at some dirty, tired but happy to see us faces. Thanks D-fa, you rock! Jack and Mal. 

Well, isn't that grand. Everyone loves a happy ending. 

Thanks to all the SAR peeps and their dogs. They do an amazing job here in the rather difficult terrain of NZ. Rocking back at you. 

For The Love of DOG

This is Jack, our dog, standing in our very nice back yard. Well, it's not strictly our back yard in that we don't have to mow the lawn and it doesn't have a fence, clothes line or compost heap in it, but it is the place we like to play in, and it is at our doorstep, so whilst technically it is Lake Wanaka in the Mt Aspiring National Park in New Zealand, for our purposes it is the back yard. I guess that makes D-fa Dogs one of those back-yard inventions that New Zealand has become famous for.

Jack is the unwitting inspiration for our line of dog gear that is like a Macpac or Fairydown or Nike for Dogs. Think of it as Petagonia, or Dogmandu (other puns willingly accepted - if we were doing fashion we could be Kate Spayed, or Karen Walkies - or if we were doing stuff that lets you dress your dog like a baby then it could be pumpkin pooch), but as we are doing gear that's made with noble, stick-chasing, bone-chewing, frisbee-catching, people-rescuing creature we simply call DOG in mind then it's D-fa. After all D is for DOG.

Anyway, back to Jack. He is handsome and brave, utterly unique (as all of our dogs are, like furry, shedding snowflakes) and very active (when he's not snoozing in the sun or in front of the fire, ever optimistic that he can turn it on with sheer force of will and concentration). He loves to bike, to swim, to sit in the boat and watch us waterski, to chase things and to have a little adventure every day in the back yard. What he doesn't love is the cold and the wet. Jack is what we call thermally fragile. We live in a fabulous area, hot in the summer (god-willing) and cool in the winter, which makes Jack's life great for 8 months of the year, but not so skippy for the other 4 months.




A couple of winters ago it became obvious that Jack needed some sort of coat for the winter. He's getting a little older now, has a few big-DOG skeletal problems, and keeping him warm was one way of keeping him mobile and pain free with less medication. So, I went hunting for a coat.




With all due respect to the people who make dog jackets and stuff, I was pretty much out of luck when trying to find something to suit my big, outdoorsy, boy. First, have they ever actually measured a dog? Have they ever watched one move and play? Have they ever wondered what it's like for a dog to wear a coat? And second, just because we have opposing thumbs doesn't mean that we should keep all the good ideas around performance fabrics, design and comfort to ourselves. Also (and I might be over-analysing here) but I see a dog as an extension of my own identity. I love Gucci as much as the next girl, but when I'm outdoors (even if it's just walking to the shops) I want to be comfortable, warm (or cool), free to move and do stuff. And as much as I want to feel the part, I want to look it too. There was very little I found that fitted both Jack's (and therefore my own) idea of what Jack would choose if he could use the internet and a credit card.




Luckily, my brother married well. He married a designer with decades of experience in the outdoor industry making all sorts of gear for people with a taste for the outdoors. Clare is supremely talented in so many ways, and now we can add doggy-design to her list of creative abilities (she can also make impressive sculptures out of pumice and number 8 wire, makes the best salads in the world, has popped out two gorgeous girls, and is very good at woodwork). So brother was deputised to look after the girls while sister-in-law was dispatched to the shed to make a coat. D-fa was litterally born in the shed, crafted from some offcuts of merino fabric left over from a run of clothing made for kayakers. D-fa is now a small(and growing) family business that still does much of its thinking over dinner, much of its design in the shed, and all of its testing on real dogs in our back yard.

We thank all the dogs and their owners who let us measure and pin and re-measure and re-pin countless versions of our products until we get them as right as we can. Mum's aged German Shorthaired Pointer literally rolls his eyes when he sees us coming with a tape measure and piece of fabric. Izy the Norwich Terrier is our 'petite dog' model who doesn't much like to swim but spent ages in the lake testing the Petite DFD (Doggie-Floatation-Device). You can almost hear them sigh 'For the Love of Dog!'. Exactly!