Paws For Thought... ZZZZ... ZZ... ZZZ... Z... ZZZZZ... (Trade 15)
This one started with this message in my Inbox on October 4th, 2007...
My brother Luke and I were searching the interWeb for doggie treats and sleeping accessories and stumbled upon your site.
We may have something to swap if you have some doggie toys in return. Do you have any?
Jake
Jake & Luke
The lean mean sleeping machines.
http://www.tigerdog.co.uk
Of course I was curious, so I checked out the link, which took me to a very cool website. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Jake & Luke were not people... they were tigers!
Or dogs!
I wasn't quite sure. But I thought they were more likely dogs than tigers on account of their keen interest in doggie toys.
Clearly these were two internet celebrities I had just been approached by. With eight legs, all told. I wanted to work out a trade, if only because I figured the chance to trade with animals just doesn't come along very often. In fact, up to this point there hadn't been any trading-with-animals possibilities, and these two were even celebrities... so I really wanted to make the most of this chance.
I replied, with some hope in my message...
Thanks Jake!
Wow - that's the first doggie email I've ever had!
Well I don't have any doggie toys up for a trade at the moment - sorry!
But keep your tail up, because I'll be doing a swap this weekend, and maybe, just maybe I'll get two doggie toys in that swap!!
You never can tell with swaps.
So fingers crossed. Or claws I guess.
Nice website by the way!
Please pass on my regards to Luke, whenever you two happen to be awake at the same time that is, or if ever rather.
Andrew
Then I emailed Corina who I was due to trade with the following weekend, asking if she could throw in a couple of doggie toys in return for something more from me. Corina came up with the goods, and declined to accept anything more in return - thanks again Corina! - and in Trade 12 two doggie toys became an official genuine trading nothing item.
Over the next few weeks Jake & Luke thought, or more likely dreamed, long and hard about what they wanted to trade with me. Then they let me know they had decided, but wouldn't let me in on the details. That's just the way tigerDogs are, I imagined, and went with it. Then it was just a question of setting a time to trade that would fit not only my reasonably flexible schedule, but also both tigerDogs' famously busy sleeping schedules.
I thought the tigerDogs wouldn't find a convenient opening for months or even years, but luckily we only had to wait a few weeks! So a time - Friday, November 16th, 2007 @ 4:15pm - and venue was set...
As luck would have it, this trade was local to me in Warrington. At 11:30am I called the Warrington Guardian to invite them along to cover my swap with two dogs, and they told me to expect a photographer to show up.
At 4:15pm we all met up. The tigerDogs brought along their two faithful friends Stuart and Stephanie, who happen to be humans.
I still had no idea what I was about to receive. I thought possibly they would give me a subwoofer speaker, or perhaps a doggie paddle, or maybe even a fancy multi-purpose doghouse like this...
But as good as that would have been, I knew finding another smart dog to trade something like that with would have been like barking up a dogless tree. Or something.
So I was relieved when Jake & Luke presented me with some of their very rare paw-crafted 'lucky' dog hair, so rare that there will only ever be 42,507 Limited Edition bags of it in the entire world. And I was getting number 3!
This, I thought, should be appealing to most humans, or most unlucky ones at least.
Luke invited Stuart to be in the photo-for-prosperity, or I think he did, but anyway we did the trade, captured by Stephanie...
But wait, that wasn't all I was getting - Luke smiled and said they brought me along an air guitar too! At least I think he did, I am not even close to fluent in doggie talk. Jake chipped in with a straight face that it's actually a fresh air guitar, because they found it whilst out for a walkies. Or I think he said that.
I couldn't resist trying to strike a convincing pose with the fresh air guitar. Luke held his head low, for some reason. I like to think he was just saying "yeah, right on - you rock dude!" in doggie language, but I can't be certain...
If you want to offer me something bigger/better for some Genuine Tigerdog 'Lucky' Hair (Limited Edition bag 3 of 42,507!), find out more about this item here, or just go ahead and contact me.
By the way, the hair is from one of the tigerDogs only, and if you want to know which one, the answer is pretty much given somewhere in the tigerDog website.
And if you want to offer me something bigger/better for the air guitar, find out more about this item here, or just go ahead and contact me.
Just not sure how soon at the minute, hopefully in a few weeks - watch this space.
So we did Trade 15 on Friday! Report on that coming soon. I traded with two dogs, or tigerDogs rather, which was definitely a first for me. The Warrington Guardian sent a photographer, maybe a story will go in this week, we'll see.
And I just uploaded a slightly-updated site, complete with the Teddy Bears On Tour link (in readiness). The pixels I am trading are now non-trading up items - I now want to trade them for things that publicise trading nothing. I changed their status from adopted items to keep this thing pure, by removing the possible argument that I didn't get the pixels for nothing...
Posted by Andrew @ 12:08pm
Monday November 12, 2007
Tomorrow Is Soon
Tomorrow evening, hopefully, Trade 15 will happen. And I for one can't wait for this one!
The Warrington Guardian might send a photographer. Then again they might not. If they knew what was going to happen in this trade, I feel pretty sure they would. But they don't know, hence the near-unbearable uncertainty.
And we still don't know if Jody's police whistle has arrived yet. She headed off to LA and didn't get a chance to collect her post beforehand...
