Rebel Blog

"Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger." - Arnold Palmer

We are always challenging our dogs to increased levels of patience. Of course with increased patience, comes greater reward. Our photo shoots sometimes involve far fetched ideas which can take multiple attempts to accomplish, we have found that the key is to maintain optimum patience and a super calm demeanor. When we are relaxed, our dogs remain at ease as well. We use lots of praise and positive reinforcement to teach the behavior we are looking for, and when our dogs make it happen they are overwhelmed with a jackpot of treats!

Here's a little behind the scenes look at Dakoda's feat, and the feast that followed. All we asked was that she balance a Jenga like stack of 41 treats on her head for a nano second, and believe it or not she nailed the shot on the first try. She was more than happy to help clean up after the inevitable topple of treats.

What is your dogs proudest trick?

Dakoda is wearing the Dakoda Collar in size medium.

Congratulations to Opie, our Ruff Tags™ giveaway winner! Opie was recently adopted into a wonderful family where he now spends his days playing with 4 other dogs, 3 cats, and a parrot. 

"Our new foster fail, Opie, is going to be needing a tag with his name and new addy (possibly his first ever real home). He doesn’t care which one just as long as its his," says his new momma.

When he was picked up as a stray he was very underweight, with both a skin and ear infection. Despite his condition this pup is nothing but love, silly smiles, and a laid back demeanor. He first came to live with the Goodman's for foster care, but after only a couple days with him they knew that they were his forever home.  According to his new momma he's a gentle giant at heart and immediately fit right in with the rest of their animal loving household. This boy is super lucky to have a happily every life and now, also, the proud owner of brand spanking new Thrice I.D. tag from the Ruff Tags collection.

Congratulations Opie!! We're so happy for you!

And thank you to everyone who entered the Ruff Tags giveaway!! Check back for more awesome giveaways!

Contest is closed, thank you to everyone who entered.

Congratulations to the winner, Opie!

Over the years we have accumulated quite the collection of failed dog I.D. tags. Despite the fact that we have three dogs all under three years old, we have somehow managed to go through many many tags. Some were chewed, some were bent, and some just plain broke so we decided to make our own tough tags for dog's who play as rough as ours do. 

When we began designing Ruff Tags, the first thing we knew without a doubt was that our tags needed to be made from heavy duty metal that could withstand canine antics without weighing them down. Which is why we turned to aluminum. Aluminum is super strong and yet incredibly lightweight, making it the prefect medium for a dog tag. 

The second problem we wanted to solve was the eternal split-ring dilemma. If you've ever used a knife blade and paper clip to pry open a split-ring, you might understand the frustration we speak of. Whoever invented the split-ring, clearly never opened one. Our dogs wear many collars, and we're sure yours do too, which is why we wanted moving your dog's I.D. tags from one collar to another to be seamless and easy. Enter the CLIP! Each Ruff Tag comes with any easy to use clip to quickly attach your new tag to any D-ring you might choose. 

We have come to learn that engraved tags eventually rub off and become all but unreadable, therefore rendering them useless. The whole idea of the I.D. tag is to ensure your beloved pup can get home safely should they ever stray. Ruff Tags are deeply stamped by hand to assure you your pet’s information stays intact and helps them find their way home.

Each Ruff Tag is hand made with love and care to create a tag that’s just as unique as your dog.

 GIVEAWAY

We’ve been through a lot of dog tags, we know they take a beating. Tell us why your dog deserves a new tag for a chance to win your choice of I.D. tags from the Ruff Tags™ collection.

 How to enter: Simply comment below telling us why your dog deserves/wants/ or desperately needs a new I.D. tag and which tag from the new Ruff Tags™ collection is your favorite. Winner will be selected and announced on Monday, May 13, 2013.

G has been with us for a little over a week now and we just love this sweet boy. We have learned that not only is he a great hiker but he also loves the water and will even jump in for a swim. He is great on a leash and continually looks back to check-in. He is full of energy and nothing makes him happier than a hard core play session with our two rough and tumble Dobermans followed by a nap in the grass.

We've taken him out to eat with us and he just laid so politely under the table on the patio while we ate. No attention paid to people walking by and not a peep. In fact, he is generally a very quiet dog. He does very well in public and is incredibly friendly towards everyone. No barking or pulling to get to people, just a wagging tail and that happy smile.

He is an incredibly intelligent dog and picks up on concepts quickly. We have been diligently working on his manners, and he is already learning to sit for attention rather than jump. He will make a wonderful family dog for a home who's ready for a whole lot of love!

You can read his story here and here.

Email woof@crazyrebels.com for more info, questions, or to meet G.

We are a dog family and we love to travel. This means we pretty much insist on bringing our dogs everywhere with us, which also means we tend to drive to most destinations, no matter how far. To ensure our dogs were good travelers we began taking them on long car rides as young puppies and haven’t stopped since. 

Early this year we embarked on a weeklong trip to Lake Tahoe, Nevada and for the first time ever brought all three of our dogs; two rambunctious Dobermans and a spoiled rotten Maltese.  What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? Well it must have turned out all right because we recently returned from a 15-hour road trip! We know this might sound crazy, but over the miles we have complied some survival tips for traveling and road tripping with our canine companions and we’d love to share them with you.

While we don’t claim to be experts, we just have our own experience and accumulated knowledge as far as what has worked well for our pups.

5 Tips for road tripping with dogs:

1.     Make the car an awesome place.  Because two of our dogs are large Dobermans, they take up a lot of legroom, so in order to keep the comfy on long car rides we give them as much room as we possibly can. We pack the backseat of our SUV and give them the entire trunk area to spread out in. Stocked with comfy bedding and plenty of peanut butter stuffed bones, those two live for long car rides.

 2.     Stop often.  When it use to be just the two of us we would get in the car and drive nearly straight through to our destination, stopping only to refuel and grab more Redbull. But now, we make sure to stop every couple hours at the most to let the dogs stretch their legs and get a good drink. While it’s not always an option, we like to try to find places where they can run off-leash for a few minutes to really burn off steam. We love our Dog Park Finder app for this.

3.     Keep their same routine. No matter where we are in our travels, we always try our best to keep our dog’s feeding schedule the same. It helps to prevent uneasy tummies, and ensures they are relaxed and enjoying the trip too. Even if it means stopping on the side of a desolate road in the near darkness to let them eat at 6 p.m., well then that’s what we’ll do.

4.     Bring their favorite things. Packing light only applies to people. When it comes to our dogs, we bring their travel beds so when it comes time to sleep they have a familiar place that smells like home for them to curl up. We also tend to over pack toys, but in a dog’s world I suppose there is no such thing as too many toys. And as long as the dogs are happy, that’s all that really matters.

5.     We are notorious for using Dog friendly apps and websites to plan the best possible canine incorporated trips, here are some of our favorite links! There are tons of websites and apps for specific cities and even countries too, so if you're international be sure to check some of those out too. 

• Doggoes has a really cool clickable map that lets you search for dog parks by region, and there's an app to go with it: Doggoes.com
• We love Bring Fido for it's easy search-ability and list of dog events taking place nationwide: BringFido.com
• Pets Welcome is great for finding pet friendly hotels and places to stay. Searchable by city, route, or even size of dog (great for large breed dog owners): PetsWelcome.com
• Go Pet Friendly has a fun interactive Facebook page, and we love to follow their traveling adventures with their two pups, Ty and Buster: GoPetFriendly.com
• Luxury Paw focuses on higher rated accommodations for traveling with your pets, for classier vacations and places to stay: LuxuryPaw.com