Your Cart is Empty
*FREE SHIPPING ON ORDERS OVER $20!
*FREE SHIPPING ON ORDERS OVER $20!
As a rule, we are National Day enthusiasts regardless of the occasion. But every once in a while a National Day comes about that fills us with the joy and enthusiasm of 100 puppies which is an apt metaphor since that day is in fact today: National Puppy Day! As you can imagine, the level of excitement at KDHQ is turned up to 11, and accordingly we’ve been gathering not only a selection of puppy merch at 10% off this weekend, March 23rd & 24th, with code PUPPYLOVE24, but also some super fun puppy facts that prove that alongside National Kitten Day (July 10th, mark your calendars!), this is the best day of all the days. The list goes up to 5 but there are quite a lot more fun things as there are multiple subheadings and a poem. Yes, a poem. Forgive us getting carried away, but we figured more puppy content = more joy. We hope you agree!
1. Puppies have baby teeth! Like human puppies, puppy puppies are born without teeth, and at 2 - 4 weeks old, 28 baby teeth begin to appear. A mere 8 weeks later, those teeth will fall out to be replaced with a full set of 42 adult teeth. Now we know time works differently for dogs, so 8 weeks is equivalent to a year and expressed like that it feels less of a faff. But still. That said, anyone who has lost a shoe, cushion, book - you’ll see why in the next section - is grateful for the relative brevity of this phase!
Got yourself a teether? Then get your teether a teething giraffe, a toy so chewy and so cool that it will lead to literal tugs of war which is of course the whole point! And yup, like all our puppy merch, it’s 10% off with the code PUPPYLOVE24.
2. Some puppies are BORN GREEN. Yes, you read that right! In 2017, there were two instances of green pups; the first in Lancashire in the north west of England, where a chocolate lab gave birth to a litter, one of whom was green, making her the first known mint-chocolate lab. Just a few months later in Scotland, a golden retriever puppy was born with a green coat, making her the first white-chocolate-mint dog of any variety. How was this possible? Well it turns out there is a green pigment found in the placentas (placentae?) of dogs, biliverdin, that very occasionally oversteps the mark and tints the puppy’s coat. Depending on your affection for punk, either sadly or happily the color fades after a few weeks. And now you know. You know what else you know? That your puppy would love a green toy all of her own, and guess what, we have just the thing: SmartLove Puppy’s First Ring Toy! Specially designed as a starter toy, these green bundles of joy will bring hours of fun for you and your pupper, whatever color her coat. Siblings will be green with envy 😉!
3. From science to literature in one dainty leap; puppies pop up everywhere, including in one of the greatest of the Great American Novels - okay, novellas, it’s 107 pages - Of Mice and Men. Readers may recall that one of the book’s two main characters, Lennie, is enormously fond of animals (though underestimates his strength in ways too tragic to describe here), but it may come as a surprise to learn that the book was almost destroyed at the paws and teeth of John Steinbeck’s Irish Setter puppy, Toby. As the novella was being written, Toby was, guess what, TEETHING and he chewed through HALF OF THE ONLY COPY OF THE MANUSCRIPT. I would not dream of paraphrasing a writer of Steinbeck’s caliber, so here is what he said:"I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically. I didn't want to ruin a good dog for a manuscript I'm not sure is good at all."
With that he rewrote the soggy and mangled chapters and began a strict food / not food training regimen for Toby since a similar encounter with the Grapes of Wrath would have been very dangerous. Stay away from grapes, raisins, and wine, pups, unless the grapes in question are these awesome Cycle Dog Grapes Squeak free toys, the ultimate literary companion: silence is golden!
4. And from literature to popular culture... did you know that the dog who played Toto in the Wizard of Oz was a rescue puppy? Abandoned in the greater Los Angeles area as a tiny pup (we know, we can hardly bear to type it), Terry was rescued by a man named Carl Spitz. A German immigrant with a knack for spotting more than one type of potential, Mr. Spitz ended up becoming Hollywood’s go-to dog guy and, to invoke (almost) the name of another Judy Garland classic, a star was born. As Toto, Terry commanded a salary of $125 week which is amazing for two reasons: the first that is more than some of the human talent earned; the second that is a whopping $2,800 in today’s money which is more than enough to keep a puppy in toys, super cute outfits, and above all treats literally forever. Toto / Terry, you are our hero.
5. Puppies will inevitably achieve intergalactic domination. It is widely accepted that tech titans will eventually be the rulers of the universe thanks to a potent blend of cash, spaceship ownership, and the unshakable confidence conferred by cash and spaceship ownership. Throw in access to AI and your very own Metaverse, you can see why such a view prevails. HOWEVER, I am here to suggest a different, far more likely outcome: the PUPPYVERSE.
A few cold, hard (okay, warm, floofy) facts: pups outpace babies by 3 to 1. Every single day, 1.2 MILLION puppies arrive, outnumbering babies of whom just 360,000 join us each day. Puppies reach adulthood far faster than their human counterparts, becoming full grown, mature adults at one-to-two years old, an age when most humans can’t walk or be relied upon to - and forgive our indelicacy - manage their pees and poops effectively. What’s more, they are PUPPIES, a group so universally compelling that I once took a job because every few months or so, a local rescue organization would bring pups into our offices for cuddles (and adoptions too, but as the mom of a rather mercurial rescue dachshund, I was unable to participate in that bit). There was a line out of the conference room all day and I promise you, in no other circumstances was that ever the case! Last but not least, it seems that we as a species have settled upon the idea that aliens are green (except for ET; attempts to reach Steven Spielberg have been unsuccessful - apparently ET is not the only one who has a less than great track record with phone calls, but we digress), and as we said at the start, there are green puppies. This can only be a huge advantage when approaching life forms from distant planets. What’s green and cute and universally irresistible? A chocolate mint lab! To our minds, these characteristics make for a force so potent that no human could possibly hope to compete, and puppies’ natural curiosity, sociability, and let’s face it, cuteness, mean that they would broker a power-sharing deal with those they encounter and that is way, way more appealing than King Tech. And there you have it.
As befits their status, the last word goes to the Puppy Poet Laureate, Isa, a Cane Corso pup (aged 3 months) who recently moved into our building and who composed this poem in honor of National Puppy Day:
All pups are awesome,
Some pups are green,
Puppies are the best things
That we’ve ever seen.
We’ll tell you a secret,
In case you don’t know,
We'll always be puppies,
No matter how big we grow!
💚😍💚🐾💚🐶💚
Comments will be approved before showing up.
There are various means by which eras are defined: the invention of the wheel, the start of the Renaissance, and above all, Taylor Swift albums, tours - so much so the current one is literally named Eras - and romantic partners. Basically, enough things change enough and that means we're in a new phase. Having said that, we have been thinking recently of a contrast: animals and pets are consistently dominant in pop culture - no changes please and thank you - and every single era celebrates and records them. In our current human-centric age, this seems at first, ahem, glance odd, but as we have previously noted, there are 6.5 BILLION cat pictures on the internet which is only slight fewer than the number of selfies on Kylie Jenner's phone (7 billion, allegedly). In our view, this is as it should be, but it set us thinking: why? Why are animals more enduring across cultures, eras, continents, and content than anything else? Step this way...
