Playing Dress-up

Before I got the dog I swore that I would not dress my dog like a circus clown. In the outlandish world of Tokyo, people dress funky (or just down-right weird), and so do their dogs. I have seen a pack of dogs in matching outfits and SUNGLASSES as well as shirts, bows, and sometimes even a two-piece (you have to see it to believe it). At dog accessory stores you can buy tiny little closets with miniature hangers just for your pooches. I have no doubt some of these upper-class furry four-legged creatures have better wardrobes than I do.

Before I became a dog owner, I thought that was the most ridiculous thing ever. I was adament that dogs should NOT wear clothes and be treated like accessories. And stop carrying small dogs around in doggie bags--let them walk for god's sakes!

Well, since I have joined the ranks of overly attentive dog owner in Tokyo, I have retracted all the above statements. It started oh-so-innocently with the brown faux suede jacket above. It was dead of winter, and Azuki at 2 and a half months old had caught a terrible cold because we kept toting her around everywhere (even though she was in a bag with a portable heat pad) which gave her bad case of sneezing. When she sneezed, the strength of the snots were so powerful that we could hear from from our bedroom, door closed. I felt like such a terrible mom that we promptly went out and bought her a warm jacket to keep her body warm. Well, she didn't like her jacket too much because it was a bit too hard and unwieldy, and with it on she couldn't seem to grasp her balance, and would wobble a bit and then fall over. She also had a knack of wiggling one front leg out of the sleeve socket, but it would never completely come out, so she would dangle one leg half out of her jacket sleeve and then again procceeded to wobble around, like a three-legged animal.

So then of course, we had to proceed to get her another sweater, of a purple variety, which fit much more comfortable and snug on her little body.

After that it was all downhill from there.

She now has a full bag full of clothes--from T-shirts to tanks to sundresses (yes, doggies wear sundresses too). I got so used to seeing her with clothes on, that without clothes she looked absolutly barbaric to me. In the early chilly spring, when she wasn't be groomed or shampooed, she would ALWAYS be wearing something, even at home.

I finally had to give up putting clothes on her back when summer finally arrived. Making my dog wear an extra layer during Tokyo's hot, humid summers is just cruel and unusal punishment, possibly even rivaling when we make her sit and wait while we say okay before she is allowed to scarf down her food.

I also said I would never carry my dog around in a bag, but then I ended up getting two, one of which is custom-made with Matt's old jeans (supposedly dogs like it because it smells like their owner). In my defense, carrying her around in a bag was the only I was able to socialize her to the outside world during her early months before she had finished her vaccinations. And because she had caught a cold, she was delayed an entire months in getting all her shots done.

Enjoy the above pictures of her when she was merely a few months old!