Delilah is asleep against my leg while I write this. She’s always right next to me. She’s the “follows me to the bathroom every.single.time” dog. My gentle little shadow. She has decided the right place for her is right next to me and she is not often wrong about that. Delilah is a gorgeous brindle and white pittie mix with Dobbie ears and a face created to break your heart open. (That face does a lot of work!) She has mastered the art of looking pitiful. She is NOT pitiful. She just wants to be close to you, and that face is how she closes the deal.
Delilah came to me as a foster (along with her two sisters), and their origin story was a bit rough. Her mother was a feral pittie the neighborhood called Diamond. Everyone knew Diamond was out there. Nobody could catch her. Animal control finally picked up her litter, and one of those puppies was a tiny, frail thing, too weak and too sick to eat on her own. So I fed her by hand at first. That stopped working, so I set her on the kitchen counter and fed her through a syringe, several times a day, for over a month. It could not have been easy for her. A person she barely knew, lifting her up, doing something strange to her body to keep her alive. She never resisted. She was grateful. I could feel it in the way she settled into my hands.
I should mention that it took me exactly one week to foster fail with Delilah. My first foster, and my first foster fail. I fell madly in love with her spirit – her willingness to receive love and give back even more – even when she seemed like she had nothing to give. She tugged at my heart strings every time I put the syringe to her mouth. I have never regretted that “fail” for a second in my life.
Anyways – Delilah slowly started to get better – and THEN she broke her little toe on the baby gate. That poor little puppy could not catch a break. But of course, the only problem I had during her recovery from that was keeping her from playing with her sisters and Loki. The toe was not going to hold her back after what she had been through!
The first several months of her life, everyone else saw a malnourished little puppy with a cast on her leg. But under those sad eyes and the fragile body, there was a sparkle in her. I knew she was going to be a very special girl. You can call that biased, wishful thinking, but I turned out to be right. I definitely need to give a shout out to Dr. Cindy and the amazing vet techs at Peak City Vet Hospital for the amazing care they gave Delilah throughout her recovery. Top notch people who genuinely care for their patients.
I have always loved a comeback story. Delilah’s is a good one. I watched a sick, frail puppy grow into a strong, healthy, vibrant girl who wrestles her brother Loki every single day. (He is a lot!). She goes toe to toe with him and holds her own. Then she trots over, curls up, and gazes into your soul with the most sincere eyes you have ever seen. If you sit down in my house, Delilah will be there. She will lean against your leg, offer you her paw, and look up with a softness that undoes people. It’s pretty remarkable to watch her weave her little magic spell on people.
Here is what all of this has to do with sparkly collars. Delilah is my girly girl. She could not care less about fetching a ball. But that brindle and white coat wears color like a runway. Bright, bold, hot pink especially, it all pops against her. One day I was buckling a collar on her and it felt like something was missing. That is where the rhinestone saga began.
The first rhinestone collar I ever made, I made for Delilah. It was deeply disappointing. Crooked lines, uneven spacing, nothing like the collar I pictured in my head. But I could not stop thinking about it. I made another. Then another. I got obsessed. Somewhere in there I finished one I was proud of, and I named it Feral, for the wild mama no one could catch. It felt right to put that name on something beautiful. Delilah is the reason I kept going, the reason I taught myself to set flatback crystals into a rim set and seal them so they hold up to a real dog’s real life. A girl who fought that hard to live had earned the right to shine.
Every rhinestone collar I make now starts with the same idea Delilah taught me: your dog deserves to be adored out loud. Delilah wears Barbie Vibes, hot pink and covered in crystals, and she wears Feral, the collar named for the mother she never got to know. The daughter of a dog no one could catch is now the dog who will not leave my side. She looks like she needs saving. She has never needed saving. She just needed someone to see the sparkle before she grew into it.
That first ugly collar eventually grew into an entire collection. Every rhinestone piece I make now carries a little of what Delilah taught me. If your dog deserves to be adored out loud, come see the Showstopper Collection. Feral and Barbie Vibes are both in there.
Photos by Five Freedoms Photography