Dear Pet Parents,

While Jill and I are feverishly working on the NEW Online Store, I would like to make you an offer to help us out. We are still in "beta" mode. Adding products, adding and replacing images and descriptions, ect. We have a couple dozen products in the Dog - Food, Treats, Supplements and Cat - Food Treats, Supplements categories with hundreds more coming to these and the other categories. Right now there are some Ark Naturals, Stella and Chewy's, Bravo!, West Paw Designs and Vital Essentials products represented. So, here's my offer...

If you want to shop the site NOW while we are building it, I will pay the sales tax. Yep. I am not adding sales tax until the whole thing is finished. That could be another day or it could be the end of the week. In the meantime, you will SAVE 8.25% on your order. This will help us figure out what is and isn't working. And since visitors to our site can add notes, you can tell us what you would like to see next. Click here to get started: http://apeacefulpet.com/online-store.html

There is a small delivery fee for orders under 100.00 for local and national clients. All orders over 100.00 are delivered and shipped 100% FREE anywhere in the continental United States.

Right now, while we are in "beta" mode, we are still delivering according to our weekly delivery schedule locally and shipping USPS nationally. Once the site is rolling, our plans are to start delivering locally ON DEMAND (think Dominoes Pizza or Tiff's Treats).

We are adding and updating hour by hour and minute by minute. Have a look and let us know what you think. Thank you for your ongoing support!

Kasen and I recently had the pleasure of meeting two new fur-kids @ Camp Run-A-Mutt: Oakley and Gordy. Each of these dogs has a separate set of pet parents that happened to be boarding @ CRAM over the July 4th holiday. They both asked us to groom their dogs while they were away, so we groomed them back-to-back on the same day. Both dogs were sweet as can be and are about the same size and weight. In fact, even their bone structure was similar. So, what are the differences? Let's look @ Oakley first.

Oakley has a nice crisp, wiry coat that is easy to maintain. His family keeps his hair a little shorter and takes good care of his coat. He had no tangles and was a breeze to shampoo, blow-dry, comb and prep for grooming. See his photos below...

Now, let's have a look @ Gordy (see photo, below). This dog has thick, wavy hair that is difficult to maintain. This kind of coat, if left longer than 1" in length, mats easily and needs to be thoroughly combed and brushed everyday. Bathing without doing so will cause mats to be locked in close to the skin. Gordy's folks keep his hair longer for a more "fluffy" look. Gordy took considerably more time to shampoo, blow-dry, comb and prep for grooming. There were areas that were too matted to be combed out, so I shaved those areas. Fortunately, they were in locations that could be hidden with longer hair. Since his folks like a longer look anyway, it worked well as camouflage. (His right front leg already had hair missing from a veterinary procedure.)

Believe it or not, both sets of pet parents requested the exact same hairstyle, and that is what they got. So, why do they look different? The length is slightly different, but the hair type is completely different. Crisp and wiry vs. soft and wavy.

The next time you take a photo to show your groomer a hairstyle you would like on your pet, keep this in mind. Two dogs can look completely different in the same style!