Experiment #15: A Dog Halloween Costume

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Well, this was one wild ride of an experiment.

Back in the spring, when we were still a few weeks away from picking Eddie up, my sister decided that I should enter him into a costume contest in October. She had found one already, and declared that I would make Eddie his costume.

A costume contest sounded fun, and I was at the time in the middle of a number of sewing projects as I struggled to make anything other than a skirt. This seemed like a fun opportunity to practice.


This is Eddie. You may read more about Eddie
and his related experiments and antics here and here. 

In April, (6 months before the contest and 5 months before the implications of what I had agreed to would smack me in the face) I agreed to enter the costume contest. Mike set about coming up with names that could be turned into dog related puns that we could be confident would be funny and unlikely to be destroyable at the teeth of our small dog.

Come September, it was time for the costume to get underway. I was about to begin the most complicated sewing project I had ever undertaken.

For a dog.

Take that as you will. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

Anyway, I measured Eddie, and Mike kept brainstorming pun costumes.

The Planning Phase

Mike eventually came up with Juan "Paw" de Leon, who discovered Florida for Spain. Florida is my homeland, so I liked this idea. We plotted to make Eddie a little outfit complete with somewhat puffy sleeves, a small suit of armor, and maybe a hat. We also would get some fountain of youth water if we could get our hands on it, and make a water bottle label if we couldn't.

I set about the sewing.There were no patterns that quite suited Eddie's size and the shape of shirt that I wanted, so I worked for a number of hours first on drafting a pattern based on Eddie's measurements. I had then set about sewing the basic little shirt to make sure that the pattern worked, and for Eddie to wear as a practice shirt to allow him to get used to wearing a costume while not giving him a chance to destroy the real thing.

The Frantic Phase

This is where the whole process got complicated, though. I got called in to work for several weeks rather suddenly.

No problem. I would still have time, and a week before the competition!

Then work kept going, and those several weeks grew into more weeks. Suddenly I found myself in the week the competition with a pile of grading and homework and no time to work until the day before the competition itself. I still had only a basic shirt.

Noooooooooo.

Five days before the competition I realized I would have to use the sewing machine if I had any hope of finishing. I didn't have the correct color thread for the sewing machine, so I ordered it quickly. Thank goodness for free shipping. We picked it up two days before the competition. I realized now that we also would have to hope that Eddie didn't decide to eat the costume, because we no longer had time to use the practice and real shirt. The practice shirt would have to be the real shirt.

The Frantic Phase gets more frantic

I got home from work the day before the competition (Friday) and ran to gather the supplies. I had to take the basic shirt and make it the actual costume, in one evening.

I finished the hem on the shirt on the machine, and then looked to making the shirt stay on. I cut the top off of the shirt in half, and added ties to keep the shirt on. First three, then when that had too many gaps a fourth. To make matters worse, I couldn't use the machine on this part, and Eddie kept trying to grab the ties off the table as I worked with them. I hoped as he did so that he wouldn't chew them off for the actual competition!



By this point I had been working several hours. It was now getting well into the evening, and I still had to make the sleeves puffy. I had started the process with a headache, and it had gotten worse as I hunched over the sewing of the little ties. I briefly considered quitting and waiting until the next year, but decided that I couldn't stop after getting this far.

Eddie will chew off his shirt or twist
himself in a knot trying

On I went. I cut slits in the sleeves and strips of fabric to put in for the little Renaissance puffs, and started sewing them in, all six. This took another several hours, as it had to be done by hand as well.

When these were finished, though, so at last was the shirt. We were now well into the evening.

I breathed a great sigh of relief, and another when the shirt fit him properly. He tried to chew the sleeves and the ties, but after a few minutes decided that he was okay wearing a shirt after all.


We weren't finished yet, though. Mike got home, and it was his job to make the armor. Another hour passed as we pieced together cardboard and ribbon in a way that would fit and work with a leash. At last, that was finished too.

The Final Stretch

The morning of, we were still adding finishing touches on to the armor and getting together Eddie's accessories. At this point, we had no way of making a hat stay on him, but I made a cute little helmet to carry with us anyway, and turned a bamboo Florida shaped cutting board into a map to the Fountain of Youth. I also made the fountain of youth water bottle label, and then we packed Eddie up to go to the competition.

Eddie in his armor, trying to sit with the driver.
This was in a parking lot.
At the competition, we were beset with another challenge: keeping a 6 month old puppy calm for an hour, and keeping him from chewing his armor off. We were moderately successful with both. He only nearly chewed a hole in a his armor. He didn't quite get all the way through. He sat somewhat still for small amounts of time, and when it was his turn he did walk properly across the presentation area, although he did try to jump on the judges.


The Results

We didn't win, but we certainly didn't expect to. This was a trial run, and what I learned is that if we want to win, we need to build an entire set and roll Eddie in on a pirate ship or something like that. Just a costume doesn't seem to cut it. There were some intense costumes! Eddie did look cute, and made many friends. As he always does. 

Was it worth it?

What we got: A funny dog costume, funny pictures, a nice afternoon outdoors, and a box of treats that, it turns out, King Edmund of the sensitive stomach is allergic to. We knew he had some type of allergies. It turns out dairy is probably one of them. 

What it cost: $6...the cost of the spool of thread I had to order. And if I kept track of how much thread I used, this would actually have cost less than a dollar. Almost every part of the costume was recycled.  

But was it worth it? I'm not sure. I'm going to give, for this year, a pretty strong no. The frantic 12 hours ahead of the competition made this not worthwhile. I would rather have caved and either spent the money on buying a costume at the last minute (which most of the people in the competition had done anyway) or just slapped him in a bandanna and just scoped out the competition this year. 

I'm going to qualify that, though. If I had time to get everything done slowly and in advance, as I had originally planned, I think it would have been worth it. We did enjoy the event itself. 

The Final Conclusion

If you don't have time, just buy a costume. If you do have time, go ahead and go all out with making one. If you've never been to a dog costume contest, you should go sometime. We saw a tiny chihuahua in a shark costume. Enough said. 

Really though, the event was fun, and there were a lot of people there who just came out with kids to see the dogs. We brought enjoyment to a few of them with Eddie's antics, so that did make it all worthwhile. We'll be doing this again sometime. 






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