Looking out for dog beds

On the yearly trip to France to ski, one’s eyes are always out for DOGS and hopefully also for dog beds. First thing that happened, however, was that I stood in a pooh. It has always been my observation that in France there is not quite as much a culture of pooh picking and pooh bags as there is here. Pooh left on the pavements is not uncommon. However, we must not be too smug because in my opinion the good manners of British dog owners is a relatively new thing. Of course SOME dog owners have been picking up from their dogs’ toileting for many years, but the wide spread good manners of British dog owners is not that old.

I walked to the ski hire shop and got a pair of skis. I later sat outside and hugely admired a little wirehaired dachshund walking on the lead with its owner. My husband dryly remarked that it was probably ITs pooh I now had on my boots. In fact the boots that were now sitting in the ski hire shop. Nice.

Anyway, dog beds are always on my mind, also when I am on holiday, so I always peek into cars that look like dog owners’ to see if they have warm dog beds or maybe luxury dog beds in there. The obvious choice is waterproof dog beds, but it really doesn’t seem to be the big thing in France either. They are suffering from not having Tuffies over there to make them really good and practical dog beds, they tend to put a bit of carpet in the back, but that’s fine. We, here at Tuffies are sending an increasing number of beds to France, I think we have sent one every day for the last week. The problem is that it is very expensive to transport big, bulky and heavy dog beds across to Europe, but many people are prepared to pay for this because the choice of great dog beds in France seems to be extremely limited.

Tiny dogs are very popular and we met a lady with a Chihuahua in a bar in the ski resort. She apparently had it running with her up as she did the tough mountaineering skiing up hill and then she put it inside her jacket as she skied down. How cute is that!!! It didn’t need a small dog bed, it just needed a warm jacket to sit inside. It was so cute in the bar as well, just sitting there on a stool, watching the world go by.