Veterinary Wisdom® Café

39 shopping days left...

The holidays are almost upon us! I thought I'd share with you a few items that World by the Tail has for this holiday season that pet lovers will be delighted with!

ClayPaws® Holiday Gift Kits. Each kit contains everything you need to make a perfect ornament of a beloved pet's paw. The clay patty is available in original white, terra cotta, or extra-soft clay (more suitable for use with puppies and kittens). Each kit includes candy cane and star charms that can be added to jazz up the print for use as a holiday decoration! Use the included ribbons to decorate and create the ornament hanger! Also included are gift wrap options for the perfect presentation. $19.95 each kit.

If you don't think an ornament is appropriate, an I Love My Dog or I Love My Cat kit is another great kit idea! It is not specific for the holidays, but makes a lovely paw print kit as well. Included in each kit are ribbons (I love my cat or I love my dog), charms (bones for dogs, fish for cats and a heart in each kit), clay patties (in original white, terra cotta, or extra-soft clay), a stylus for engraving the print, and a heart shaped cutter to make your print into a heart shape. These kits are a great way to preserve happy memories of beloved pets!

There are many other great options for the holidays at our website. There is plenty of shopping time before the big day. (Order before December 10 to be safe!)

Also - watch for a special ONE DAY sale coming on Monday, November 30! I'll announce details here soon!

--Tammy

Duplicating a Memory

How in the world, if your beloved pet has already passed away, can you make a duplicate of a ClayPaws® print?! Well, it truly is possible! And recommended!

Check out our new "Copy Kit". Included is everything you need to make duplicate prints of existing   ClayPaws® prints! We use this technique here in the office to make molds with which we create our demo prints! (We don't have a doggie here who lets us make ClayPaws® prints for you, our customers, all day!)

We know that one-of-a-kind memories like your paw print impressions are so precious! This copy kit allows you to make duplicate prints for family members, even for putting a print outside in the elements! You won't have to worry about the one and only getting broken or destroyed!

The process is fairly simple. Use the included MoldMaker™ product to make a reverse print or mold of your print. Bake this mold and then use it to press into the ClayPaws patties. This will press the impression of your pet's paw into the clay, just like the original! From there, your imagination can run wild!

Use Plastic Wrap for Clean Prints

I received an email over the long weekend from Joyce. She uses our ClayPaws® kits at High Meadows Pet Crematory in West Virginia.

She had been reading our website (www.veterinarywisdom.com) and my blog. She has a tip that I want to pass along to any of you who are making ClayPaws® prints.

She said that they have worried about the dirt and fur that make it into prints when pressing the animals prints into the clay. She has discovered that once you've flattened the clay out into your nice patty if you cover it with plastic wrap it eliminates the problem! The plastic wrap is thin enough that you get a great print, but it keeps the clay clean from dirt! She mentioned that she has experimented with which wrap to use, and the cheaper/thinner wrap is better! (Go for the cheap stuff in this case!) It doesn't wrinkle and make impressions on the clay.

Do you have any tips you'd like to share about making prints in your clinic? Every little tip can help other clinics make the best prints possible! Know that your clients appreciate your attention to detail in making these amazing memories of their pets!

Thanks for your tip Joyce!!

ClayPaws tip from Patricia

Patricia, our resident ClayPaws® print expert (and customer service manager) asked me to pass along this information.

We have been getting so many calls lately about using spray glazes/paints on your finished prints. I know I have written about this before, but it bears repeating.

We do not recommend using an aerosol paint or finish/glaze on your prints. Most of these sprays are incompatible with the clay. In many cases, you will find that the paint or glaze will not dry and will remain tacky/sticky.

We HAVE heard from a couple of clinics about a spray that they have been using that DOES work... we are going to do some experiments here in our ClayPaws® studio to make sure that this is the case. If we find that there is a spray that works with the clay, we will pass along that information to you.

If you feel like you want to spray paint your print, we suggest that you only do so if you have more than one print in case it doesn't work out well! (If you work in a clinic - try it on a sample print before doing it with a client's one and only print!)

As always, call us if you have questions about finishing your ClayPaws® prints! We welcome the questions, and if we don't know the answer, we'll research and find out what we can! Let us know if you have any tips as well. Do you have a technique that works for your clinics' prints? Let us know and we'll share them here!

Dog Days of Summer

It is full-on summer here in Colorado at World by the Tail headquarters. We are hitting the high 90s in temperatures every day. For us, that means two things.

First - we worry about pets in the heat. Fort Collins, and Colorado, is a very dog-friendly place! People love to take their pets along with them, but right now, that is NOT safe. Because of the high temperatures outside, inside cars the temperatures skyrocket. This is dangerous, and can be fatal very quickly for pets. We would love to remind you out there of this danger. Losing a pet because of summer heat would be awful! We don't want you to have to deal with that loss! Keep your pets home, in a cool environment until the temperatures come back down to safe levels! If your pet is outside all the time, make sure they have access to water and a shady place.

Also - if you do see a pet in a hot car, don't hesitate to call the authorities. You might save a pet's life!

The other piece of summer that is difficult for us at World by the Tail, is also to do with the high temperatures. ClayPaws® kits are susceptible to heat! If they sit in heat for too long, the clay will be affected! So - two points on this one... Be sure that you are storing your ClayPaws® kits for your clinic in a cool, dry place. Also, know that our shipping time could take a little bit longer than normal. We do our best to ship them to you so that they don't have to sit on trucks, to avoid them sitting in the heat. We will delay your shipping over weekends and ship them on Mondays if that is the best way! This will help avoid problems with your kits! Call us on Friday or Monday to get your kits shipped out early in the week!

Baking, baking, and more baking questions

Wow! We have had so many calls this week from pet parents who've received ClayPaws® prints from their vet clinics, but didn't have the baking instructions included!

I thought I'd mention this here on my blog (even though I'm fairly certain I've talked about it before!)

If you work in a clinic and make ClayPaws® prints for your clients, it is important to let them know that their print HAS been baked, or if it NEEDS to be baked! It can be confusing for them because the sticker on the bag says "remove from bag before baking". (We have since corrected this but these stickers are still out there! Now there are check boxes for Baked or Unbaked!) We had to put this warning, however, because we have had people bake the print IN the bag, which you can imagine, wasn't pretty!

When I worked in a clinic, I simply wrote on the label "Baked" when I mailed a print to a client. Taking a couple seconds to do that (Or to check a box) helps with any confusion! Also, if you are mailing prints home, please be sure that they are safe and packed very well so they don't break on the way. We've had a couple calls lately of prints that arrived cracked! Yikes!

The baking instructions come with each print also. If you send the print home unbaked with your client, please be sure to include the instructions! Let us know if you have suggestions how we can improve our packaging to make it easier for you!

ClayPaws advice

I had a lot of phone calls today with ClayPaws® questions - so I thought I would pass along some of the advice I gave out to you as well!

The first call I had was from a clinic who is trying out ClayPaws® kits for the first time. They are baking them in-house in a toaster oven and have had some trouble with their first tries burning! Using a toaster oven is OK, as long as you are sure of the temperature. From what this caller was telling me, it sure sounded like their oven wasn't set quite right. It was set to 275 degrees, but was baking quite a bit higher than that! This is an easy solution - buy an inexpensive oven thermometer and figure out the correct setting for 275 degrees!

She also was baking their prints on a metal pan. This can cause some discoloration to the prints. We highly recommend glass for baking. It helps to distribute the heat more evenly and your prints will bake better! We use toaster ovens here in the office, and we use a piece of tile to bake on! Easy solution!

The other call I got was from a distraught client. She had just picked up her cremains from her local crematory. The number she found was ours with the paw print, but the question she had was actually for the crematory. If you are a pet parent who has received a paw print - we don't actually make the prints here! We don't actually have anything to do with the cremation process either! Your wonderful vets and crematories use our product to make paw prints for you! If you have a question about the actual paw print, we can help! Otherwise, contact your vet or crematory!

Take Credit!

I talked to a pet parent earlier this week who had just received her beloved pet's ashes back from the veterinary hospital. She was calling not only to say thank you for our ClayPaws® product, but also because she didn't know who the ClayPaws® print was from!

She wondered if we could see if either her vet's office or the local crematory used our product. In this case, both of them did, so I wasn't able to help her narrow down who had made this print. She was just baffled why whoever it was didn't take credit for making the print! She said that it was such a lovely gesture, they should want their clients to know it was from them!

I encouraged her to call her veterinarian's office and let them know just this!

My suggestion to you if you are making prints for your clients - Take Credit! It is a wonderful gesture that 99% of your clients will truly love! Be sure you let them know it is from your clinic with a little note attached, a sympathy card, etc. If you are the client and don't know who the print is from, give us a call! (1-888-271-8444) We'll try to help solve the mystery. But also, call your veterinary office - they may take the credit - where credit is due!