Expert: Marla - 2/27/2010

Question
QUESTION: i am looking for a simple crochet, dog coat pattern both for a doberman and  for a westie. my daughter has the dobe and i the westie. if you know where i can find these on the net and free, i would greatly appreciate it. i am a beginner at crocheting having knitted since age 13 and at almost 80 i am looking for something different. many thanks in advance for your help. thelma

ANSWER: Hi Thelma!
Thanks for asking! My sister-in-law raises and shows Dobermans!  Is your daughter's a red or black?
Welcome to crochet! It is my favorite hobby!
I found a website: http://my.opera.com/north_star/blog/show.dml/1662002. This shows a pattern for a large dog. I’m not sure if you want a pattern like this or not. Parts of it may need to be adjusted like the underneath section because Labs are huskier than Dobermans. Another website is: http://www.crochetnmore.com/dogsweater.htm. These patterns are shown more for the Westie size, but it shows how to adjust the pattern for a larger dog. This may give you some ideas. If you search “Free dog sweater crochet patterns” you may get a variety of patterns. One website that has a lot of patterns of all kinds is crochetpatterncentral.com. When you get to this site, click on “Free Crochet Pattern Directory”, then when you get to the directory page, click on “Pets”. You’ll need to look for “sweaters” or “Jackets”, etc. on this list. There are a lot of cute things here.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Please let me know if you need anymore help.

Marla

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QUESTION: many thanks marla for your help. when my oldest daughter was born the name marla was suggested to me, but because i wanted a name that started with a, i took the m off of your name and she ended up with arla to this day 52 years later. my youngest daughter's dobe is black and a great pup weighing 32 kilos at the age of 9 months. he is a very good animal and is in a very good home. thanks again and i will check out these sites. thelma

ANSWER: Hi Thelma!
You are quite welcome. I think it was my great-grandmother that named me. Most of my sister-in-law's dogs are black, and she has some reds, too. She also also has a Papillon, which she shows also.
I hope you can find a nice coat pattern for your dogs. Good luck!

Marla

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QUESTION: hi again marla, i do have another question. as i knitted for 67 years and just started to crochet for something different to do, i did find one of the patterns which you helped me in locating, but it is on a dalmation whose back is 19 inches from the neck to the base of the tail and Bogart is 27 or 28 inches. the number of chain stitches for the dalmation is 37, so how many would i add for him. it seems that the number of chains between the sizes is 3, with 37 chains for the 18 inch length back. again many thanks for your help. thelma
years ago after having many breeds of dogs i had pugs which i trained in obedience and got my CD and CDX including one CD in the US, my being a Canadian. my trainer had papilons and won many obedience awards with them. they are a very clever breed, but i must say that the dobe is almost number one. now at almost 80 i have a westie and is she spoiled, not 100%. This dog of all the dogs which we had, seems to have a special character.

Answer
Hi Thelma!
I am glad you were able to find something you liked! The number of stitches depends on your gauge. But I would guess the number of stitches would be about half again as many, since Bogart is half again as long. So I would add about 18 more chain stitches, making it about 55. You may have to experiment a little with the number of stitches. After crocheting a row or two, measure the length and see if it is the right length. It would probably be better to be a little bit short than too long, because you could crochet a border around it when you are done to make it longer.
We have a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, but he is a very large Corgi. Our first dog was a stray, and was a Corgi mix. I think he was part Chihuahua, too. We had him for 17 ½ years. Dogs are definitely my favorite animals.
I hope this helped. Let me know if you need anything else!

Marla