I don't know where we first got the idea for our Cocoa and Luca's Handmade Dog Accessory range, I think we had started making our fleece tug toys, platting and knotting happily away and my husband then went on from there, the idea evolving probably after seeing Bear Gylls hanging off a cliff edge and saving himself with his paracord bracelet and being impressed with the paracord (not Bear Grylls!)
And so he started weaving with the paracord, learning the different knots and designs, what combinations work well, which colours sit well together and finding out in the meantime that the paracord does offer a strong, durable dog collar but also it’s flexible too. Different weaves working better for different dogs, the narrower collars obviously sitting better on a smaller dog but then finding a thicker and wider weave for the larger dogs.
My husband has a talent for knowing which colours work well together, our 'camo' colours are a great hit with the working dogs, pink and purple for the girls and then we sell a lot of the ‘Len's Original' design best known in the red and tan colours.
He makes sure he only uses the highest quality paracord, the 550 spec, 7 strand with an impressive breaking strain of 250kg (well I'm impressed with that, bearing in mind our Luca is a large dog and he weighs 50kg so it should be up to cope with all his pulling!). The hardware too is the best he can find, using only stainless steel for the chain on the half check collars so they won't rust after getting wet. For the metal buckle, Nickel plated side release buckles are used and moving onto the plastic buckles, he has sourced a good quality one with a locking mechanism for extra security.
Our customers seem pretty pleased with them too, for example Luna, a Spanish Water Dog (no relation to Cocoa) loves swimming (obviously no clue in the name!) but her previous collars would always end up smelly and dirty very quickly, however her Cocoa & Luca's handmade paracord collar is standing up well, even after 6 months, it cleans well and doesn't end up as woofey in the nose department!
So who wouldn't want their dog to stand out from the crowd, to be stylish but also wear something that is functional and hard wearing? Something that is hand made and also made to measure to every individual dog? Who indeed!