The Winter Coat

Most dog coats are cut as a rectangle with a neck hole, in three sizes, for a dog shape that does not exist. They ride forward, they turn under the belly, and the strap wears a bald stripe across the point of the shoulder within a season.

Ours is cut from eleven measurements taken off your dog standing square: neck, chest, girth at three points, back length, drop at the flank, shoulder to elbow, the width between the shoulder blades, and two you would never think of.

The two nobody takes

The first is the distance from the point of the shoulder to the elbow while the leg is forward, not standing. A coat that fits a still dog and binds a walking one is the most common failure there is, and you only find it out on a hill in February.

The second is the neck opening measured over the groomed coat at its longest. A coat cut to a freshly clipped schnauzer is a coat that chokes him in November.

XI

The cloth

Eight-ounce dry-waxed cotton — the stuff that goes soft and marks like a good jacket, not the plasticky wet wax that cracks at the fold. Four colours: olive, oak, sand, and a dark navy that looks black until it is outside. Lined in wool blanket for winter, cotton drill if you want something for a wet spring.

Everything is finished at the bench. The seams are felled, the edges are bound, and the straps are riveted and stitched rather than one or the other.

The pattern stays here

Your dog’s pattern is cut in card, labelled with its name and the date, and filed. A second coat — a spare, a spring weight, one for the other house — takes ten days instead of four weeks and costs $40 less. If the dog’s shape changes, and it will, bring it in and we will re-cut the card. That is included, and it is not a favour; it is the only way the first coat keeps being worth what you paid for it.