Amusing-Musings Little Dog Newsletter | Spring 26

Amusing-Musings Little Dog Newsletter | Spring 26

Hello hello

It is officially spring but just in case the weather where you are hasn’t received the memo, I’m going to attempt to bring you all the joys of the season via this hopefully amusing-musings Little Dog newsletter. Filled with all the excitement in our Little Dog Laughed world minus the rubbish moments. I’m editing those out to give you a breather and a safe space to switch off for a few moments from world worry.

Firstly, have you managed to dry out yet and is your home also sporting the heavy aroma of damp dog?! My goodness, the RAIN. I know we’ll all be wishing it back when the hosepipe bans kick in and the grass is parched but the endless low hanging grey clouds smothering Derbados for the last two months have been a heavy mood drain. Days and days without any sunshine. I’ve kept the xmas window fairy lights up just to stay sane. How on earth do people cope in the artic circle countries with weeks of polar nights. I’d definitely be the first to crack.

On the plus side it has meant socially hibernating* throughout January and February was enjoyed guilt free, and as I share my life with a furry beastie who has little interest in wet walks, I feel I’ve got off lightly. Last week I did spot a beautiful carpet of snowdrops. So much hope in such an unassuming, little flower. A soul boosting moment to hang onto when the rain returned just a few hours later!

Bursting With Colour

Bursting with Colour, that’s our theme for 2026. All the tools in the mood lifting design box are now in full use. And it is working! We kick-started the year with a tradeshow in Glasgow and flooded the stand with colour. I was pleased with the finished result and our third visit to Glasgow did not disappoint. If you haven’t been to Glasgow, definitely add it to your city-break wish list. It’s an amazing city for architecture, nightlife, art, restaurants, shopping and the people are so friendly. We stay in the Adagio Aparthotel chain and I would highly recommend the rooms, especially if you are working to a budget. It’s bit like a bedsit in that it has a mini kitchen which is great if you enjoy numerous cups of tea at the start, middle and end of each day.

Finalists in GotY26

Our nice award news landed just this week. Confirmation we’ve made it into the finals of the retail industry Gift of the Year 2026 awards. Whoop-woo! We’re in the Pet Gift category with our folding travel bowls. Finalists for the third year running, can you believe it! Little ‘ole us, could it be we’re on a bit of a bowl! Last year we won Highly Commended for our dog walking bags and pocket treat tins. So we’ve colour matched our folding bowls to co-ordinate with the walking bag options. It feels a smidge arrogant to glaze our own product (Glaze.The word my teenage brood use if one excessively praises oneself or someone else) but these folding bowls are great. They tick the ‘practical, affordable yet kinda cool’ design box which can be quite hard to do in the world of pet accessory gifts. I also really like that these bowls work as a gift for any dog lover, regardless of gender. All the new colour-ways should be in stock mid March but you can discover more here Pet Accessories

Cards From The Dog | Birthday & Occasion Greeting Cards

And because we’ve been very focused on building on the appeal of our dog walking bags and adding to our pet product options it’s led us down the Cards From The Dog design path. Quite a different style from us and the nichiest-of-niche but really enjoyable to create. After all, if you can’t design for niche when your brand is niche, what hope is there! So if you are the spare human in your home and maybe it’s the birthday of the chosen one or you have furry kids that both of you worship, there might just be the perfect birthday card or thank you greeting card in our new range. You are very welcome to browse the new collection here. Cards From the Dog

Special Offers

When I haven’t been creating I’ve been curating. Lots of special offer bundles from our end of line collections. The quantities aren’t large and it’s more like a labour of love but it’s hard to let go when you hate waste and you’ve also put so much personal time into designing it. Gift offer curating has also supplied me with my best factual nugget of the week. One which I’ve been sharing with anyone not quite quick enough to avoid me. Whilst filling our new £10 Really Useful Tins with really useful things, I did a quick fact check on the humble eraser. Did you know it was first invented/discovered in the 1770’s and used to replace breadcrumbs. Honestly, breadcrumbs for rubbing out mistakes! Love a school day moment.

               

 

SEO Website Analysis

And when I haven’t been working on absolute £3, £5 and £10 bargain bundles, I’ve been labouring my way through the joys of online search engine analysis. I’m a classic example of old dog, new trick. SEO is basically adding keywords to our website that are relevant to each and every product. It’s so that our pet-themed cards and gifts have a fighting chance of being featured in a google search. All pretty laborious stuff. And sadly, it takes away from being true to your own voice. So if you ever read anything on our website and feel it’s gimmicky and slogan pushy, I promise, it’s not through personal choice.

What I have done on the website that feels more productive, is allocate our complete product range into the dog breed categories. Hopefully you’ll find it easier and quicker to choose cat products or cards and gifts for your favourite dog breed. It’s also highlighted which dog breeds I’ve completely neglected to honour. Something I promise to start correcting throughout the rest of the year. Can you guess which Breed Gifts we have the most cards and gifts for? It surprised me even though I’ve designed everything!

Crufts 2026

This week, we’ll be returning to Crufts. Although it’s only four days long, we’ve been prepping for weeks. Mostly trying to recall all the things we thought about last year and promised we’d implement this year. And as is our typical shipping poor luck, lots of our new spring product gifts, which would be perfect for Crufts, are arriving the week after the show. However, I’m feeling confident we’ve got enough nice things to avoid disappointing those geared up for a jolly Crufts spend up! Our legendary sewing genius Alison, has rustled up some handmade laptop bags. They are gorgeous. This is one of the shapes and she’s made a landscape one too. If they prove popular at Crufts we’ll make more for the website and will let you know when they are in stock. She’s sewing like a superhuman all week.

 

You may also like … our new Designer T-shirts.

I’ve rustle up some one-size, limited edition designer dog t-shirts for the show which are also part of our fundraising efforts in support of DogsTrust. The amazing dog welfare charity we are happily partnered with for 2026. £5 from every t-shirt sold goes to DogsTrust. So far, with your generous website donations (thank you SO much), and through our illustrated DogsTrust gift book and other Little Dog Laughed products sales, we’ve raised over £25,000. But now we’ve moved the bar to 50k so there is lots more work to do. The plan for this year is to create more exclusive gift lines for the website to help raise funds for DogsTrust. So please do keep watching this space. We simply can’t do it without you.

If you are already thinking you might get an attack of Crufts FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, Fear Not! There will be a return of our Crufts@Home sale which I’m currently filling up with extra bargains and money saving discounts. Keep your eyes peeled from Thursday 5th to Sunday 8th March to bag yourself a bargain. And if you heading to the show, we are in Hall 3 Stand 144.

 

Pet-Themed Stationery Letterbox Gifts

Did you know we now do Letterbox Gifts? They are another website exclusive. Imagine you are crazy busy and a birthday of one of your pet-loving family members or friends has snuck up on you. Or perhaps someone special is going through a tough time and deserves some thinking-of-you kindness. Well this is where our dog-themed stationery filled Letterbox Gifts are the answer. And the best bit is we do the time snaffling bit (wrapping and posting) for you. Just decide which gift box would be most enjoyed, add your message to the comments box, provide the recipients address and we’ll do the rest. Some of the gift box options include exclusive stickers in your favourite designs. Yes, that’s right, stickers! You can add decades and crowsfeet to the girl but you can’t ever take away the joy of stationery and stickers!

And finally, an extract from Big Dog’s daily diary. He of the aloof, don’t hug me, cat trapped in a dog’s body fame recently eyeballed me all evening from the far end of the sofa. Perhaps you have a dog who snuggles up for a fuss but not Big Dog, he likes to be near you but never close to you. He proceeded to watch me intently all night and I couldn’t really fathom why. It was obvious he was tired and very ready for bed but still he stayed. Then the penny dropped. I think the slim possibility of a before-bed-snack was obviously enough to force him into staying up. Hence the eagle-eye watching of me, the primary food provider! No wonder he slept well that night, exhausted from intensive hopeful anticipation.

Right time to go. I won’t admit how long these humble witterings have taken me or that I’m aware Ai could write me better than me, in minutes. But where is the fun or satisfaction in that? If it means anything to anyone, my poorly structured, faulty grammar musings are all my own work. I’m not a complete luddite but I just think we’d all be better served if the Ai creators focused on solving the really important life challenging issues and the rest of us continued to use our brains while we still have them.

On that note, I’ll leave you in peace and express my genuine gratitude for your continued interest and Little Dog support. Like many sectors, retail is facing lots of challenges and we wouldn’t be here without you. Your orders are always gratefully appreciated. So here’s a little 20% thank you discount code AM20 to reward your kindness and blog reading stamina! It works on any full price Little Dog Laughed greeting cards. Jolly useful if you need to stock up ready for upcoming spring birthdays.

Wishing you all well, take care Anna Danielle

 

*Highly recommended hibernating binge watching includes Landman on Paramount+, the Cinderella storyline in the latest Bridgerton drop and David Attenborough’s Wild London if only for the tree of parakeets. Had to immediately make that sight my phone screensaver.