Pup culture: hand made Halloween costumes

As the temperature gets cooler, and the leaves start to fade yellow, I am cheered on by the prospect of my favorite holiday getting closer and closer… my endless fascination with zombies, vampires, and anything else that goes “bump” in the night, has made the one eve it’s ok to celebrate all things creepy especially cherished. Oh Halloween…

This year I am extra excited, as I now have a four-legged fur baby to costume as well. (Although I do not want a sissy, clothes wearing dog, a Halloween costume will be the one exception to her “no clothes” dress code.) Throwing some devil ears on her would be too easy—although quite fitting. Determined to find the perfect costume for my bratty puppy, I turned to Etsy.com. Without a doubt I knew that the masses of grass-roots, entrepreneurial spirits that share their wares via Etsy would not let me down. And of course, I was right. Please enjoy the most divine canine costumes that I cherry picked for you. Which one is your favorite??


Big, bad wolf: actually, this is SOOO fitting for my puppy, who if it were up to her, would gobble up EVERYTHING that ever crossed her path. Made by hand, and offered on Etsy, can help your pooch get in touch with their primeval spirit.

Wanna bee: omg, so cute. This would have been perfect for the cuddly lap-dog I thought I was getting…

Called Purple People Eater, but reminds me more of my sparkly "My Little Ponies" from days of yore. So cute!!!

Robin Hood: especially fitting if your dog’s a thief like mine…whether she stole your heart, or your dirty underwear...

Pirate pooch: Arrrrgh! Show some culture, represent Somalia this Halloween with this nifty pirate ensemble.

I will definitely be interested in your feedback, as well as any advice on how once the costume is on her-- to make sure she doesn't eat it? (This being her first Halloween, the concept might be confusing to her, and for all she knows the new outfit is her "treat"?)

Tabloid fodder food for thought: some of Drew Barrymore’s green tendencies

My sister has a problem. She is majorly addicted to the weekly celebretard-filled tabloids, and cannot get enough Kristen & Rob, Brad & Angie, Jennifer Anniston & _ (insert that week’s dude here)__, Britney Spears, John & Kate + 8 + Ed Hardy, eating disorders, drug problems, infidelity, etc, etc. (Judging by the list I was just able to ramble off in .2 seconds, it seems like her problem is contagious and spreading.) Like with all addictions, she wastes countless fortunes to satisfy her cravings—I think a year’s subscription to US Weekly alone is around $150, and she has subscriptions to ALL of them.

On the bright side, she knows a lot of pop-culture shit.

On the even brighter side, she recycles. Her version of the 3 “Rs” when it comes to tabloids is as follows:

Reduce: When she’s finished reading them, she gathers them all up to reduce the massive amount of clutter she would have otherwise.
Reuse: Once gathered, she hands them all over to me. This eases her conscious a bit, in that she rationalizes that the money was better spent if multiple people get to benefit reading that week’s gossip.
Recycle: After the magazines are in my possession, she knows I’ll make sure they get disposed of properly and responsibly. So although she’s the one doling out the green... I’m the one that keeps it green.

Due to the constantly fluctuating pile of mags sitting on the chest at the foot of my bed, I always have mindless reading material on hand, which makes my daily hour long train rides back and forth to work much more palatable. It was during one of these trips that I was reading an OK Magazine (major headline was about how Angie wasn’t attracted to Brad anymore because he gained 10 pounds. Good thing I was sitting down when I read that mind-blower.) when I feasted my eyes on a juicy page filled with Kelly Green appropriate tid-bits: insight into Drew Barrymore’s life pertaining to green doggies and shopping. W00t w00t!!

Although more expensive than the $3 reusable shopping bags you can pick up at the grocery store, the proceeds from the sale of Drew’s favorite $195 beaded burlap “Feed” Masai fabric bag will actually provide enough money to feed two Kenyan school children for an entire year, through the United Nation World Feed Program. Talk about guilt-free shopping…

Drew loves dogs, and ironically—spoils her dogs rotten, healthily. Her yellow lab-chow mix Flossie loves the organic, all-natural Halo Liv-a-Littles. They have no chemicals, no preservatives or artificial flavors, and come in pink packaging. (Wonder if I’m good, if my dog would share these with me?) A lot less expensive than the “Feed” bag, these treats can be purchased for $5 at most pet stores and high-end grocery stores around you. (If you were wondering, Flossie prefers the chicken and cheese variety.)

Stay tuned, more green news inspired from trashy gossip coming your way…

Organic candy shampoo for dirty dogs

Racing home from an exhausting day at work, only to find that my puppy peed and/or pooped in her crate and then played it in all day long, is not fun. (My nose usually updates me before my eyes do.) Picking up her smelly self and throwing her in the tub is a far cry from my previous after work duties of going to happy-hours and sipping cocktails. (Safe to say I severely underestimated the work required for a puppy.)

Getting my fingers all up in her hair, and sudsing the matted poop off her is pretty gross. Thank god my roommate is never around during these moments to see how quickly the white porcelain tub turns brown…. However, although I can never claim to like doing this, I do have to admit that the shampoo I selected for her smells so good — like candy— that the situation is sweetened a bit. I know its gross to admit this, but the shampoo actually smells so good that it makes me hungry and causes my mouth to water a little bit, despite my disgusting task at hand (and literally, in hand). The added plus to using this shampoo is, once she’s clean and running around like a mad-woman trying to dry herself off, her crazed antics make her a veritable moving air freshener—and the gesture is certainly appreciated as I undertake my next task of scraping and sanitizing the excrement out of her crate…

My puppy shampoo by Earthbath is made out of all natural ingredients, (the company promises that nothing bad whatsoever, for anything, is in the formula), its tear free and gentle, will not wash away any topical flea treatments, was manufactured in the USA, and is satisfaction guaranteed: if you couldn’t tell by now, I really think this is the way to go. (Comes in a variety of formulas, I’m currently hooked on the cherry scented “puppy” version. Wonder if I can even use it on myself??) The product is sold at your local PetSmart, but also is available through multiple online vendors.

Sorry for the brown streak of articles—“they” always say to write what you know, and right now, I’m majorly down with the brown. Until they come up with a safe/environmentally friendly way to do this:


you can look forward to upcoming articles such as “The many green uses for puppy pee-pads,” and “Organic dingleberry recipes”.

Biodegradable doggy doody bags

I learned about cleaning up dog poo the hard way…

In preparation for an imminently arriving puppy, I began taking my mom’s spoiled rotten, house dogs out on walks. Terribly out of shape, and ornery at having their nap schedule interrupted, they were hard at first to get under control.

Once they settled down enough to take notice of the new smells and sights around them however, their inner canine natures took over and their tails started wagging as they both wore matching open-mouthed, tongue-lolling doggy grins. As they pranced along, nature again took its course, and they both intermittently relieved themselves. Prepared with an empty plastic shopping bag (at least the evil plastic bag was going to get some re-use), I picked up their still-warm feces with a grimace. Since my parents live in a woody, posh neighborhood, there are no street or community trashcans out and about. I held onto the bag of poo for the remainder of the walk, and since there was really no other choice—threw the bag into the garbage cans in the garage.

This happened on a Monday. Trash is collected on Friday. The following 4 days seemed like the hottest of the summer. That bag of poo sat in the garbage can, baking, for four days. Every time the garage door was opened, a warm burst of sewer assaulted our nostrils, and the odor was maliciously infiltrating the house through the garage door that connects to the laundry room, and into the cars that were innocently parked inside the garage. My parents didn’t know about the poop, and blamed the smell on chicken bones… afraid for the reaction my admission would create, I kept silent but deep-down felt as bad as the garage smelled. (Sorry Mom.)

Although I felt horribly guilty about using biological warfare against my loved ones, I felt torn. What else was I supposed to do? Couldn’t leave the poop, although at the time I rationalized that would be the most logical route to go—poop is biodegradable, and would dispose of itself without creating any additional waste. A plastic shopping bag was the best container I could find at the time, and I couldn’t just leave the bag filled with poop as litter on the ground? (Feel like that would totally defeat the entire purpose of “picking up after your dog”?) In retrospect, I guess I could have dumped out the bag’s contents into the toilet, and flushed the poop away. (A bag with poop remnants would have to smell better than a bag filled to capacity?) My poor family and I dealt with the results of my poopy decision for an entire week, and I learned my lesson: use bags that are meant for doggy doody duty, with green bonus points for using biodegradable versions.

After just doing some cursory research, I found a whole slew of reasons why dog poop is actually bad for the environment (who knew??) which makes it more comprehensible why cleaning it up is so imperative as to have been made a law. For instance, I think smelling dog poop is bad enough—the idea of drinking it is absolutely revolting. And yet, apparently this is happening as 20-30% of all pollutants in waterways are attributed to dog waste. Overall, it is believed dog waste is third or fourth on the list of contributors to bacteria in contaminated waters due to rainwater run-off, dogs pooping near watersheds and beaches. Ewww! (It is estimated that dog owners do not collect over 4 million tons of dog waste annually.)


If the poop has to be cleaned up (and it does,) plastic bags are a bad choice, as “plastics are the fourth highest generated waste in the U.S., originate from petroleum which is non-renewable, do not biodegrade, and take thousands of years to break down.”


Taking all of this into consideration, obviously biodegradable poopy bags are the way to go (added incentive—they even have cute little dispensers to make these look like a cute dog-walking accessory! Isn't it so cute-- the bag looks like poop coming out of the dog's behind! My goodness!) My fact source, the eloquently, subtly named PoopBags.com, explains why biodegradable bags (coincidentally, theirs in particular) are the way to go: if the bags are ASTM D6400 certified, it means the materials they use are fully tested to ensure that it will degrade at a similar rate to a freaking apple! They are made from a combination of corn and other renewable products, and biodegrade naturally when exposed to the earth’s elements and micro-organisms in the soil. Also—because of the way the bags are made, they “breathe,” which ironically makes it easier for us to do the same. The construction of the bag allows heat and moisture to escape, which reduces bacteria build-up and retards odor. (Yay!)

Since the stork has since delivered my fur baby, and I daily bear witness to how much poop comes out of such a tiny thing—this product is something I am definitely going to stock up on. Picking up poop is never going to be an enjoyable experience, but at least using biodegradable bags will make me feel like I am doing the world a good deed. (Like, 5 good deeds a day.) Since all dogs go to heaven, I hope this portends favorably for the dog's owner too?




Also, there’s a cute and inspiring background story behind PoopBags.com, and despite the current economic gloom, the American dream is alive and well. (The creator’s Vice President is Miss Cinnamon May… his dog.):

PoopBags.com! When you typed some keywords into your search engine of choice, you may have laughed when you saw the link for www.poopbags.com come up. Well, when I was walking my dog in the summer of 2003, I laughed too when I first thought about the idea...As a single guy, living in Chicago's Lincoln Park, I would always run out of the plastic grocery bags I used to pick up May's poop. As a backup, I'd use the ones from the newspaper, sandwich bags, ask my Mom to save me bags, snag some from a friend's house – it was crazy.
Then I started thinking about all these plastic bags... I looked online and started reading more and more about plastic bags in general. How they are made, how they'll never go away in my lifetime, and then I laughed to myself and said, "What if I started a company called PoopBags.com and sold biodegradable dog poop bags for a living?" Well, I challenged myself to find out.After purchasing the URL from a company in London and testing several manufacturers, with help of my Vice President of Product Testing, Miss Cinnamon May, I chose the final product that launched PoopBags.com, Inc.

Trust me, it takes awhile to get used to saying "PoopBags.com." At first, I was a bit shy in saying it as I knew the looks and reactions I would receive. Now, I look forward to it. So does the media... We've done interviews on the radio, had several articles in newspapers across the country, been featured in magazines and more. Each year we have experienced tremendous growth, but we're just getting started. The entire World is now realizing that plastic bags are simply bad for the Earth. It takes oil to make them, they sit around for over 100 years, they harm fish and wildlife, they plug drainage sewers in cities, and the list goes on.

Well, that's the story on PoopBags.com so far. We've moved from my dining room to a small warehouse, I have two employees for whom I am very grateful. So, whether you bleed Green like me, "just need some poop bags" they might as well be or you want to help a corporate guy out of those four walls, please consider a purchase from www.poopbags.com. You'll be doing the World a bit of good, one bag at a time.Thank you for your support, we truly do appreciate it.- PC-