There are no naked dogs in the Pesale home.
A few years ago, Cat Pesale and her son Eric started noticing little yellow puddles by the window drapes and on the furniture legs in the family’s home.
They had never had a problem with “marking” before, but their Chihuahua Godzilla had recently become quite territorial against younger Chihuahua brother Eddy, who already had an anxious tendency to piddle around strangers.
“Being that Godzilla is the top dog, he would go and mark on top of Eddy’s little dribbles and it created this cycle and I didn’t realize how bad it was,” Cat Pesale said. “When I got a black light, I was not happy! There were streams and streaks going down our furniture.”
The recommended solutions for “marking” in the home weren’t a fit for the Pesale pups, and the family did not want to keep any of them in a crate or restrict their free roam in the home.
“There was nothing in the market that my dogs would be able to stay in. They were able to G.I. Joe crawl across the floor and get right out of bellybands. We got a trainer here to try some techniques and that didn’t help,” Pesale said.
The mother-son duo decided that they’d have to use their own skills to create a solution so they started their own company, Three Naked Dogs (3ND), an indoor pet clothing line that prevents marking.
Cat, an experienced craftsman on the sewing machine, started making T‑shirts with a built-in absorbent pad using one of her dogs as a model.
“I just started making stuff and it took about 25 different garments to get what we wanted. We called him Houdini because everything I made he could get out of,” Cat said. She did the prototyping, test designs and fabric selection for the garments.
Eric, who graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011, handled the company’s “tech stuff,” including web presence and social media accounts.
“I graduated with a history degree and creative writing minor and then I thought maybe I want to be an entrepreneur,” he said.
So he took classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology to learn Photoshop and printmaking, at Orange’s Media Arts Center for web design, and taught himself through trial and error to create 3ND’s website, logo and branding images. (The company’s online market has brought in the strongest sales thus far).
Fast forward two years later, Cat finally got the prototype right, sent her 3ND designs to a manufacturer, and all the clothing is made in the United States. Patents are pending on branding, and they’ve recently launched a national ad campaign.
Three Naked Dogs
So how did they come up with their company name, “Three Naked Dogs,” which seems odd considering the product line it promotes?
After dressing the male dogs, Eddy and Godzilla, so much to create a sample product, and because they felt so comfortable in the final product, the Pesale’s felt family pug Lola, who did not have a marking problem, looked naked without her own T‑shirt.
“You get used to seeing the dogs in the clothes and it’s funny when they don’t have them on you think, ‘Oh my god, they look naked!’ Which sounds absurd to a lot of people but we’re used to them with their little jumpsuits on,” Cat Pesale said.
The Product
Markitwear Belly Shirt for Indoor Marking is a T‑shirt that snaps on like a onesie and has a removable waterproof panel that absorbs urine if a dog marks.
“Inside that waterproof lining you can put a disposable sanitary napkin if you don’t want to wash. Or you can use our pad that wicks the moisture away from the dog and is washable,” Cat Pesale said.
Instead of armholes, the tees have a circular open arm area for the dog’s comfort.
“We got rid of the front armholes on the shirt to give the dog more mobility and it makes it much easier to take it off,” Eric Pesale said.
He also came up with the idea for the leash hole, a small hole at the back of the shirt that allows the garment to fit over a harness so that you can string the leash through.
Learning As They Go
Eric Pesale said creating and marketing 3ND clothing has been a tremendous (and thus far successful) learning experience for both him and his mom, and that they “make a great team and collaborate very well.” One of the skills he picked up from her is sewing.
“He did get his own machine; that was an interesting moment,” Cat Pesale said. But Eric learned quickly, even details his mom didn’t know, like adding the keyholes to the T‑shirts.
“It’s been an incredible journey. The two years has gone by fast because there’s been so much learning,” she said. “For me, how to work with manufacturers and how to get my patterns made. It’s been an educational process now we’re in the marketing phase, which seemed like it wasn’t going to happen!”
To visit the Three Naked Dog Website, visit www.http://clothingdogs.com.
