In Asia, They Eat Dogs

     The latest Asian dog abuse story is not about serving Fido at a wedding feast, but about trimming coats and sweaters with dog fur.  Mark Jacobs designer jackets, sold by Century 21 department stores, are marked "faux fur."  They are actually trimmed with Chinese raccoon dog fur.  This fur is very poor quality, so it is cheaper to use than fake fur.  The Humane Society of the United States has investigated this situation in New York State.  They are calling for merchants like Century 21 to investigate their inventory more carefully to be sure that manufacturer's labels are accurate.  This is important because a large number of consumers who won't wear animal fur.  http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/fake-fur-might-actually-real-dog-183400949.html
     Reading this article reminded me of something I read in the newspaper many years ago.  Dog hair can be spun into yarn and used to make hats, scarves, and sweaters.  Anything you can make with wool, you can make with dog.  They even have a name for dog yarn - chiengora.  That word is a combination of the French word chien, which means dog, and the word angora, which is a soft yarn made from angora rabbit hair.
     Chiengora is heavier and warmer than ordinary wool.  The more you wash it, the more it fluffs up.  The more it fluffs, the more it insulates the wearer from the cold.  Some people only wear chiengora hats and scarves.  They maintain full garments like sweaters are too hot.  The fluffy aspect that dog yarn garments exhibit is know as a halo.  Mixing dog fiber with wool fiber reduces the halo somewhat, but does not eliminate it.  The advantage to adding wool fiber is that it gives dog yarn elasticity.  This makes the fiber much more manageable when knitting.
     Wearing the hair of the dog is not a commercial venture.  Turning what the dog sheds (or what the owner brushes out) into yarn, is too labor intensive to be profitable.  Still, there are some people out there who will spin your pet's hair into yarn.  If I collected Mardi's hair for her lifetime, I might have enough for a nice hat and scarf.  I could send the hair to Detta's Spindle in Minnesota, and she would return skeins of Mardi to me.  http://www.dettasspindle.net/WoofspunDogYarn/WoofspunDogYarn.html
     Check out these pictures of people wearing garments made from their dogs.  http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/2008/10/wearing-hair-of-dog-portraits-of-people.html
     Getting back to Asians and their reputation for eating dogs - surprise, they aren't the only ones. It is documented that dogs have been consumed in North America and Europe.  In Europe dogs were a meat of last resort during hard times.  In dire times people in the Arctic and Antarctica also used dogs as food.  Beware, the article contains graphic pictures of butchered dogs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat
     It has been against the law in the Philippines to slaughter dogs for food since 1998.  However, I managed to find this recipe for stewed dog (wedding style): http://www.recipesource.com/ethnic/asia/filipino/00/rec0001.html 
     I doubt the veracity of this article.  The writer, an American man, married a filippina woman. Someone in her family recommended the dog entré be served at the wedding.  Later the groom found out serving dog at a wedding is a bad idea.  Common belief is that it can cause the couple to fight like dogs on their honeymoon.  Either the joke was on this groom, or it's on anyone who reads this article.
     Here's a website that can't be real: http://www.cookyourpet.com/frames_intro.htm  Use the drop down box to navigate the site. I'm sure the owner of this site thinks they are hysterically funny.  I'm not laughing.