realmsofgold

Toscha the Pound Puppy

This is another tale from the archives.  I figured I hadn’t spoken about a pound puppy in a while. 🙂

Toscha’s restoration was originally supposed to be a surprise.  Her person’s boyfriend sent the first email.  It was titled “Poor Toscha is dying”.  He wrote:

My girlfriend’s stuffed animal, Toscha, is on her last leg. She is a vintage 1985 Pound Puppy, who has been through it all. I want to surprise her for her birthday by having Toscha fixed, because she has to last another 35 years.
So how bad is it? Well, the pound puppy logo has lost all color; there are numerous holes all over her underside and many places where her fur and fabric are extremely thin; her neck is broken and held in place with a small piece of fabric; her eyes are just black pools as all the paint has rubbed off; she’s missing an ear and can’t hear too well; her paws have seemingly no toes; her cheek is split wide open; her mouth has been sewn shut from having her teeth all knocked out when she was younger.
Do you think you can help Toscha? If you think you can and it helps you, I can also try to find some organ donor puppies on EBay and send them to you with Toscha.

These are some of the diagnostic photos he sent.

She wasn’t quite as bad as he’d described, and she was definitely treatable.  I sent a LONG list of treatment options (think full page single spaced type).  He ended up forwarding the treatment proposal to Toscha’s person, rather than doing it himself as a surprise (usually the wise move).  He wrote to Toscha’s person:

I’m sorry I couldn’t do this myself… Let me know if I can help more… There’s just lots of details, and Toscha is very precious cargo <3.

Toscha’s person wrote to me directly nearly a year later, asking if I could still care for her.  My answer, of course, was yes.  There were still specifics to work out though.  Toscha’s person wrote:

This is great news! I have two donor dogs I will be sending with her. In regards to your questions I want to go with the following options.
1. For the eyes you can either paint them or use the donor eyes whichever is best.
2. For the ear, you can build it or use one of the donor ears. The donor ear might be a better match and easier though.
3. Please use transplant fur for the holes and tears. I want her to last so anything that needs fur go for it. Then please put the lining underneath all of the fur. I want her protected for the future. I would like the original stuffing both in the heart and then what is left mailed back with her when she is all fixed. I hope that is ok. I have something planned for the rest of her stuffing. She has been my baby and I want it.
4. She will need the spa treatment with new stuffing and heart. Like I said I want the rest of the stuffing so please don’t get rid of it. please be as gentle as possible and if washing causes any more tears or issues I can pay to fix with donor fur and reinforced by the lining before she makes the trip back.
5. For her tattoo you can keep her original. I kinda like the wear and love. If it has to be fixed please transplant it.

So Toscha flew out from Chicago for her complex surgery to begin.  Here she is starting with her spa:

And here’s her old stuffing, ready to go back home with her once she’s healthy. 

You can see why I replace stuffing!

Here is a rare photo of a fully lined patient.  This is Toscha’s finished lining, before she got turned right side out and restuffed:

Lining is usually a thin knit or flannel, in a similar color to the patients original fur or skin.  Here’s Tascha’s heart being made and installed with some original stuffing:

And here are her first photos (not quite ready, but time for feedback from her person for chubbiness and other adjustments).  We ended up using donor eyes and nose:

We needed to do a bit of facial adjustment, as the donors who came with Toscha (and who I used as a sample) didn’t have quite her original shape. 
First though, she needed her tattoo back:

Then on to face surgery.  Here was the first adjustment, minus freckles:

The response: Yes much closer, the only thing I see different is the crease by the eyes and nose and the freckles … I can’t believe that is her!

A bit more minor surgery….

She looks amazing! said her person. :-)So Toscha, her stuffing, and one of her donors, headed home.  This second donor hadn’t been used at all for surgery, but had become Toscha’s buddy during surgery and they were now fast friends. Her person’s reaction?  Perfect!

Baby Bunny’s story is a long one, so be warned. 🙂

Baby Bunny’s story (at least for me) began with an extensive back story of her discovery in a box closet with many other animals.  She was half decapitated and couldn’t be donated with the other animals.  More importantly, her person’s mother looked at her and saw memories:

“My mother found some old photos of the toy and filled me in on the bunny backstory I could not recall including some of the details mentioned above.  It had been purchased in Japan by a family member.  Three year-old me carried it everywhere: around Japan, around Arizona, on a trip to Illinois.  And the name of this bunny was the fabulously creative: Bunny Baby.Then, this e-mail was born. “

These are the photos that came with the email:

As you can see, Baby Bunny had some serious neck, head, and upper torso injuries (her person was concerned she might become the “Headless Horsebunny”!).  We agreed on the following treatment:

1) Gentle spa (to remove closet and box dust)

2) neck repair with new fabric to reinforce

3) head wound repair

4) tail reattach

5) seam repair/tighten

Agreed, the bunny was on the way from Arizona within a few days. And we started with a spa:

In the meantime, Baby Bunny’s family had been perusing this blog and found this post: https://doctorbeth.tumblr.com/post/135724936125/sir-wolf

and she wrote:

First off, it is amazing!
Was this a one-off, or do you still ever do custom clothing for stuffed animals?   Either way, I realize the prospect would require additional payment.
Bunny Baby used to wear my old baby clothes, and my mom was thinking of buying a couple new things at the store when Bunny returned, but none of the human baby stuff fits all that well considering Bunny’s unique plushie measurements.

My response was:

yep, i do make clothes when people request it. what were you thinking of?

Turns out they were thinking of a samurai outfit, or a kimono, or maybe a hoodie with earholes and jeans.  I priced out all three and they decided to go ahead with all three!  Of course first, Baby Bunny needed to get better so the clothes could be sized to the right chubbiness.

Here’s her heart being made and installed:

And the wounds were treated and chubbiness judged:

Once that was set, clothing began.  First up was the hoodie and jeans:

Bling is essential for an OG bunny….

Next up was the kimono fabric selection:

Her family chose the last option…and this is where an important change occurs.  Turns out Baby Bunny’s family was mixing their gender in conversation…so from now on  it was agreed that they are a they.  (because I can’t use it for animals, warm blooded or stuffed):-)

While they were choosing kimono fabrics, I went to work on the samurai outfit, but I’m going to show it last.  Here is Baby Bunny in the kimono:

Now note the floppier ears.  At this point, I asked the family if they wanted a bit more stuffing in them, and we agreed to add that at the end.

Here is the bottom layer of the samurai outfit getting fitted:

And here’s Baby Bunny fully armored with stand up ears!

The family’s response:

“That’s so cute!” Is the verdict from Mom. 😀 If she’s happy, I’m happy.

Ready to fly home!

Their family wrote upon their arrival:

I just wanted to let you know that Bunny Baby arrived safely on Wednesday.  My mother was extremely excited to unbox and look at both bunny and clothing alike.   We also enjoyed the patient paper that came with….
Thank you so much for everything,

To paraphrase… if they’re happy, i’m happy… but i’m also really happy with the wardrobe of clothes! 🙂

Originally written September 24, 2019… this is part of a retrospective of older stuffed animal repair patient posts from my tumblr blog. You can read other back posts at doctorbeth.tumblr.com.

Ursula was very well loved by her little girl. Ursula’s family’s mom wrote that she “was won at a carnival game, so her materials are probably not top quality. However, she has been loved to pieces (almost literally) by my five year old over the past three years. This includes my daughter using her as a pillow every night and carrying her around by the horn all the time.”

Here is the first photo of Ursula I saw:

As you can see, she was a bit droopy and had lost the original glow on her horn and hooves, but she was still pretty stable. I proposed a spa and recovering her horn and hooves in new fabric. Her family agreed and Ursula flew in. Here she is in her bubble bath:

She’s getting nice and clean and don’t worry, she’ll be plump soon! You can also see a bit of the glow on her hoof and horn, but we still planned to recover them as the fabric was quite thin.

Here’s here heart being made and installed with a bit of her original stuffing. I have special unicorn fabric for their hearts… mostly because I saw the fabric and couldn’t resist. 🙂

Once she was mostly stuffed, it was time to find new pink glowing fabric for her. That took a bit of doing. She originally had sparkles, which were long gone, and a perfect match in color and sparkles was nowhere to be found. Here are the three options I found (the one on the left has sparkles… don’t know if you can see them):

Her family opted for the panne velvet in the last image… a really close color match with some shine.

Surgery proceeded and soon Ursula was ready to fly home:

She flew straight home to Indianapolis and into her little girl’s arms. I got a photo of them…Ursula was being squeezed very tightly around the neck, so it’s a good thing she got plumped up! And the feedback from the five year old? “They did such a good job!”

This is part of a retrospective of older stuffed animal repair patient posts from my tumblr blog. You can read other back posts at doctorbeth.tumblr.com.

Scooby Doo circa 1979

This poor pup, at the age of 44, was nearly decapitated sometime in those four plus decades.

His person didn’t remember if it was a fight with another dog or something else, but she found him stored like this among her mother’s things, and wanted to see about making him feel better. In addition to the neck wound, he was missing a spot on the back, needed some eye touchup… and we were planning a spa for him.

Here he is in his bubble bath:

I don’t know about you, but I can see his Scooby grin (which is actually missing) forming under the bubbles in that photo. I think it’s one of my favorite spa pics. Anyway, here’s his heart being made and installed.

Next his internal wire supports were straightened and reinstalled, and his neck injury was treated. That’s when I figured out he once had a collar, because a stub of it was clinging to the inside of his neck. So I spoke with his person and we planned a new collar. These were the felt options, based on illustrations of Scooby from that era (the stub of collar was so faded, it was hard to tell the original color).

The plan was just to do a collar, maybe with a blank diamond hanging from it as I couldn’t exactly replicate a machine embroidered tag (or the images of Scooby’s tags online). But it was the weekend, and we let Scooby rest and while he was resting and I was busy doing other things, I had an idea of how to make his tag! So I made a tag with the collar, attached it, and sent photos. I told his person if she didn’t like it, it was easy to go back to a plain gold diamond:

But she loved it! So we kept the SD tag and next was his new felt spot on his back to replace the missing one, and a new smile. Based on the stitches on his fur, it was hard to tell what his original smile looked like, so I sent a sketch with some example options:

His person chose the center one, but said thick yarn maybe? I knew it couldn’t have been thick yarn originally. There would have been larger holes. But based on all his felt parts, thought maybe it was felt, so that’s what we agreed to do. Soon, Scooby was smiling again and ready to fly home:

His person wrote “he looks brand new, wow I cannot thank you enough! Thank you so much!! He looks amazing!”

and when he got home, she added:

“He is home!!! He smells like my mom, I know you bathed him and cleaned him I don’t know how he does but that is the only thing I have now that smells like her. Thank you so so much!!!”

(that’s the heart of original stuffing holding the scent. 🙂)

This is part of a retrospective of older stuffed animal repair patient posts from my tumblr blog. You can read other back posts at doctorbeth.tumblr.com.