I spent yesterday knitting a project from this pattern book while watching the movie Dogville.
I had to rip out all my work this morning – the sweater did not fit my little Gizmo. ergh!
Mo is my littlest dog – a 13 pound Shih-tzu. According to the pattern measurement, he would fit into the medium sized pattern. I simply refused to believe this — there is no way that this dog is a medium – especially given that the book also showed pictures of a dalmation wearing sweaters. If a shih-tzu is in their medium category, then the dalmation should be in some specialty large-sized/women’s world/Lane Bryant catalog! There is no way that the dalmation could wear any of these creations if they were true to the measurements.
So I knit all day, confident in my canine knowledge. And of course, the sweater is too small for Mo.
Am I having body-image problems with my dogs? Will this madness never end?? Are they now trying to make dogs feel that they aren’t good enough, that they should maintain some type of heroin-chic look?? What will this mean for my Pug???
purlingswine 
I wonder if you’d gotten a more expensive book the sizes would have been more accurate? After all, any woman knows that the more expensive the dress, the larger cut the sizes will be… somewhere there is a size zero expensive enough to fit me (and my size 16 ass).
Poor Mo. Don’t fess up about the size. Mo is the exact right size. I promise you you can’t afford a pattern book expensive enough to make realistic sizes AND doggy therapy…
This has nothing to do with your blog (can you imagine??) but check out http://www.needleandhook.com for some edgy stuff and beautiful sculptural handbags…
How is Pug? Petite, sweet thing that she is? I hope she isn’t getting caught up in all of this skinny stuff. Stay true to your inner self Pug. You are a beauty. And for goodness sake, knit them all sweaters made from Noro Iro out of the Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton book. They deserve it!
“No, Mommy! I’ll just chew on this slipper for breakfast! If you keep feeding me Purina, I’ll never make it into an episode of ‘MTV Beachhouse’!”
Funny you should mention it, but I have theorized for some time now that all this concern about overweight pets (you see it in pet food ads a lot) is really just projecting human body image issues onto them. So the pattern sizing says less about what is normal for a pug, and more about the body image issues of the author! Creepy.