There are two French bulldogs in this workshop, and between them they have opinions on every parcel that leaves it. So we have some sympathy for anyone hunting for dog mum gifts or dog dad gifts: the person you are buying for has organised their whole life around an animal, and most of what the shops offer them is a paw print on a mug.
The dog is the easy part. The harder part is the person, because a good present for a dog lover is about how they live with the dog, not just the fact that they have one.
Start with the title they would actually answer to
Plenty of people who own a dog would not call themselves a dog mum. Plenty of others put it in their social media bio. Find out which one you are dealing with first, because the designs here take the title seriously.
Dog mum and Dog dad are laid out as dictionary entries, with a word, a phonetic spelling and a definition already written. The dog dad one ends "talks to the dog in full sentences, and has quietly given up the good side of the bed", which is true of more men than will admit it. Every line is yours to change, so you can keep the joke or rewrite it about the one specific dog and the one specific sofa.
If a definition is more words than they would want on a desk, the same title comes in bigger type and fewer of them. Best Dog mum ever and Best Dog dad ever say it outright in a large serif. World's best Dog mum and World's best Dog dad set it in a script and a plainer face, a world title for the person the dog answers to.
The word on all six is editable. A dog nan, a dog grandad or a dog auntie gets the same cover with the right name on it. The two dictionary entries sit with the rest of the dictionary definitions, and the other four with the family designs.
Or a row of dogs, and nothing to explain
Some dog people do not want words about themselves at all. For them the illustrated strips run a single row of drawing along the foot of the cover with a name above it.
Dachshunds puts a row of them nose to tail, and French bulldogs does the same for the breed we are least able to be neutral about. These are the quiet ones. From across a room it is a nice notebook with a name on it, and up close it is a notebook that knows who it belongs to.
If their dog is neither of those breeds, we do not pretend otherwise. The better answer is the dog itself.
Their actual dog, from a photograph
Portrait and caption takes a photograph and redraws it as line art for the laser, with a short caption underneath: the dog's name, the year they came home, or both. Pick a picture where the dog is clearly separate from the background and the face is in good light. A dark dog on a dark rug loses its outline, and the preview will show you that before you pay, which is the point of it.
Make a meme uses the same photograph for the opposite purpose. Two lines of heavy capitals above and below, and the dog is the setup. If there is a picture of the dog doing something it should not, this is where it goes.
Both live in the photo notebooks, along with the rest of the covers that start from a picture.
The walk, the park, and the words
Every dog has a route. Your place, mapped draws any spot on earth as a map with its name and coordinates beneath, so the field, the beach or the bit of woodland the dog has walked a thousand times can go on the front. Search narrower than you think: a park draws as something people recognise, a whole town draws as a tangle of roads.
If the words are what you are stuck on, A poem for them starts from a few facts about the person, their dogs included, and gives you a short verse to edit until it sounds like them. And Secret message puts one short line small in the bottom corner of the back cover, for a private joke about the dog that nobody else needs to get.
What to have engraved
Use the dog's real name, and spell it the way the owner does. Dog names are where spellings wander: Bonnie or Bonny, Alfie or Alfy. The preview shows you the engraved cover before you buy, so read it twice.
Keep the dog's age off the cover. A dog is two for one year and then it is not, and the cover stays the same. A name, or the year they came home, stays accurate for as long as the notebook does.
Which cover colour
The engraving is a burn into the leather, not ink on top, so every colour takes it differently: darker than the cover on some, lighter on others. A dictionary entry or a drawing of a row of dogs needs enough contrast to read, so try your wording on a few colours in the preview before you choose. Here is what the laser actually does.
Ordering
£17.99 plus £2.75 postage, engraved to order and dispatched within one working day, Monday to Thursday. If you want it to arrive as a present rather than a notebook, the gift set adds a pen engraved to match and a spare refill, in a fitted box inside a matching gift bag.
Every dog design is linked above, and the rest of the catalogue is sorted by who it is for.