Dog Beds for Stalking

It would be easy to divert from making dog beds and meander into all sorts of diversifying products. Recently we were approached by a game keeper, who had been out stalking with a German client and had experienced a pretty unpleasant wait in the wet and cold. He was asking us for a mattress for stalking….. The problem was that sometimes you need to lie down in the vegetation and wait for a long, long time for anything to happen. Although the deer population is almost exploding creating an urgent need to thin it out, it can still be a matter of having to wait a long time for the right beast to come along. On this occasion the ground was wet and it was close to freezing, so even with water resistant clothes, the people got wet and cold right through. In the end they had to give up and go home as the chap had got so cold he would not have been able to function if the right moment arose to use the rifle. We tried to help out and made a little travel bed for the ‘keeper to use in the future, but the problem was that it had to be super light. Sometimes you can walk for eight hours or more to get to the right place and you really don’t want to be carrying a whole lot of heavy gear with you. On the other hand, you don’t want to wear super warm and waterproof clothes either because it can get very hot when you climb up and down mountains. So the roll-up matt was ideal.

We also have customers who want us to make dog beds in shapes that are way beyond the normal “bespoke” idea. Sometimes we make triangular waterproof dog beds and sometimes we provide the most intricate arrangements so that they can fit under a dining table with a table leg going right through a hole in the middle of the bed. If we are overwhelmingly busy, we kindly decline these requests, but if we are not so flat out with work, the special jobs become welcome distractions to the work shop routine.

Of course, boot liners for cars is the constantly recurring request. We used to make tailored boot-liners for ANY car model. If we got an order for, say a Mercedes C class or a Land Rover Freelander or a Mini, we could do them all. We had access to a car local forecourt and it was such a delight to create something very special for the individual cars. We eventually got too busy with manufacturing large dog beds that we had to discontinue the car boot liner range because it was a very specialised and time consuming job, but we still have customers coming round with their old boot liner to ask if we can adjust it to their new car. In other words the boot liners are outlasting the cars….