Coordinating Colors

I'm one of those handlers who wants my gear to be minimalistic, plain reading, and, for Keeper's safety, eye-searingly bright (and preferably reflective).

Personally, I like royal blue and hunter green. Too many years in the hunt/jump and dressage world where the choices were black, brown, or havana brown, and not enough time in the eventing and Western pleasure barns where bright colors and bling were necessary to present the right picture. When it came time to buy gear for Duncan, I went with blues, and stuck with blues his whole career. Everything matched, without thought or trying.

That changed with Keeper. While I still like blue, in Duncan's royal blue gear, Keeper got bumped into and stepped on. She was wearing hot pink at WorldCon, standing next to me, when a lady asked where my dog was. Keeper is my very best ninja of unobtrusiveness.

If she's standing next to me, she doesn't want to make eye contact or flirt with people. She wants to mind her own bees-wax and do her job. That lack of eye contact (and not having Duncan's bright amber eyes) means that a surprising number of people overlook her. A lot (a LOT) of people still see her and comment on how pretty she is, but the bright pack color helps the otherwise unaware.

When it came time to get Keeper her own work gear, I waffled on lime green or hot pink. Hoping to cut down on having to answer the "boy or girl" question, I got Keeper a hot pink backpack. This was a mistake. I hate pink. I love red, but there's just something about pink that irritates me (might just be pastels). But hot pink kept people from running into her (or over her), so it worked well enough.... only, I still hate pink, and people still ask if she's a boy.

So, when I ordered Keeper a custom harness, I ordered it with a lime green liner and the embroidery came in the same color. I asked for (and got!) a lime green leash and backpack as gifts this year. The backpack is in a new design that I hate when it's on the underharness, but looks alright when just the top of the backpack attached to her custom harness. That means that her collar, her leash, her harness and her pack all match now. There's still a lot of hand sewing I need to do to get the patches on, but I'm happy with how it's coming together. (I had to undo the one in the picture, I'd put it on crooked.)

Keeper stands and looks at the camera in a bright lime pack with a leash loop over her shoulder.