pamperedpuppy // luxury lifestyles for dogs

Dog Halloween Costumes from Puppe Love

The toughest thing about Halloween is deciding who or what to be. A bottle of mouthwash? A vampire? A hippie? The options are just endless for we two-legged folks; the only limits we live with are our imaginations and our pocketbooks.

It's a bit tougher for dogs, but it's getting easier every year as clever manufacturers come up with ingenious ways to help us transform our four-legged pals into other characters, animals or objects. One company who's been doing some exciting new work with pet halloween costumes is Puppe Love, whose Mardi Paws costume we reviewed last month.

The company also sent along two other new items in their Halloween costume lineup, which we'll cover in this review: the Colorful Owl Halloween pet costume and the Sir Barks-A-Lot Knight costume for dogs.

Both costumes are design marvels, as we've come to expect from this designer. The level of detail in these costumes are par excellence - we've just never seen the like. To be frank, these costumes are better than most I've bought for myself over the years!

The Colorful Owl is a full-body costume with a small set of sturdy leg elastics at the rear to help hold the elaborate costume in place. The hood is padded to help keep its shape and features the owl's ears, beak and a pair of hilarious googly eyes. When pulled over your dog's ears, as in the photos to the right, it creates the most adorable googly eyed look on your pet.

The costume pulls on over the head; it fastens once at the neck with velcro strips and again over the left side of the chest with a wider strip of velcro. It's full-body; like a t-shirt underneath, it covers the underbelly without fastenings. It stops just past the rib cage with a slight elasticized waist to ensure that boys as well as girls can enjoy this costume equally.

The details are just awesome. The entire blue portion of the costume is covered in black "waves" to signify feathers. The chest and tail feature a combination of yellow and orange plumage made from felt. The entire back is covered with the owl's wings, again from a combination of black cloth and yellow and orange felt. These wings come with posable wire inside so you can shape them to your liking (how awesome is that). There's even a hole sewn in at the shoulders so you can put a harness and leash combo on your dog for walking without interfering with the costume.

The fit is superb, as with all the items we've tried from Puppelove. Fit Merry like a glove and she waddled around looking like an owl, charming the pants off anyone who was willing to pay her some attention. And while we loved the Owl costume for its colorful plumage and the way it made Merry's eyes go googly...

The Sir Barks-A-Lot knight pet costume was hands-down our favorite of the two because it was just so darned cute. I mean come on. How cute is this?

The padded hood is in a silvery gray color and is lined with flat chrome studs, just like real "armor". It features a padded mouth guard that you can swing down over their face; since it's adjustable, you can put it over their mouth for photos and then under their chin for running around. This hoodie ties at the neck to help hold the hood in place.

The body of the costume is just fantastic. The entire four-legged body outfit is made from that same silvery gray material, very lightweight and shiny. The sleeves and the legs feature breathable gray mesh with more rivets down the outside to continue the "armor" look. The bodice then features a stitched on red tunic with green piping, a black felt belt with real white plastic belt buckle and a medieval shield screened onto the back. This is incredible detail and all very well executed; nothing here seems cheap or flimsy.

This costume, unlike the owl, is not pull-on. It fastens under the midsection with a series of snaps that will hold the whole works in place. The fit is also fab, as you can see from the photos. The face guard was a little big for our princess, since she has such a flat little face and the mouth guard also has to fit pooches with longer snouts, but it didn't detract from the cuteness of this costume in any way.

The quality, attention to detail and imagination that these pet Halloween costumes unleash is second to none. Four paws way up for Puppe Love's costumes!

You can find out more about Puppe Love from their web site at www.puppelove.com. Tell them Merry sent you!