It Takes a (Pug) Village

One of the challenges of doing an out of town photo shoot is casting the models from 2000 miles away. Models without an agency. Wouldn't it be easy if I could just make one call with my specifications and get adorable, well behaved dogs who will wear sweaters? My other problem is that I have little to offer in terms of compensation other than a mention in the book, and a copy when it comes out in 2007. So, I decided to use the power of the internet. I had gotten some good results from the classified I had posted to Craig's list, but the pug needed for a breed specific sweater for the book was missing. Which surprised me, because on my last trip to San Francisco, I came to the conclusion that Pugs were the official Dog of San Francisco. Where were they all hiding? This picture is Lemon, a Pug that I knit a custom sweater for in 2004. Her mom, Kathleen posted pictures of the sweater on a Pug community forum site. I reached into the archives of my brain and finally remembered the site. Pug Village.com. So I posted a plea to the Forum, and now have Pugs booked. One is coming from Bakersfield, which is about 4 hours away. Are you sure about this? I asked. One of the Pug people coming told me about a Pug park where all the dogs show up once a week. So now I've been tapped into the West Coast Pug culture. There's one in Chicago, too, which meets twice a year for a "Pug Crawl", where people bring their pets to a tavern and pretty much get toasted. I sat outside of one once with a suitcase full of sweaters and pretty much got ignored. The people were mostly there for the libations. It was a valuable lesson in really being selective about venues.