At the end of last year, I won a Hot Paws giveaway from MyDogLikes.com. I'm blogging about this simply because it is an interesting product, not because I was asked to.
I was excited to win as the photos they shared were so beautiful and it looks like such a lovely keepsake. Once I got it home and looked at it and read through the directions I had to wonder which of my six cats was I going to memorialize.
This product is marketed towards a larger dog paw, so I realized that there was enough surface area to do more than one paw print. Having just recently lost Kit, who was in the middle of the pack age-wise, I was keenly aware that I couldn't be sure of keeping any of my cats around for long periods of time. I have keepsakes for the older cats, but not so much for the younger ones - which interestingly enough hinges on Twee.. those who were older than her were the elders and Kit and everyone younger... well I almost consider them the little ones.. Well, and Twee will always be the baby..
Attempting to get three paw prints in one soft disc of moldable putty was not easy..
The first attempt was not bad, but they weren't very deep. The second attempt Fleurp was not cooperating, and with the third attempt, it was Twee. Since it was Twee, it seemed fitting, so I decided that was good. I decided to add my and the CatMan's fingerprint as well and after a 48 hour drying period to set the mold, I sent it off.
It came back rather quickly and I was a little surprised by what arrived. When looking at the photos from MyDogLikes, I thought it would be smooth all over, but the underside was quite rough. There was a bit of sandy grit on the underneath as well. I wrote to the company to see if this was what they intended the product to be. Ali, the general manager at Hot Sand wrote back and said that all of the casting is done in sand molds which is why the back was textured as it was. She said that they like to think of it as creating keepsakes reminiscent of walking on the sand at the beach. The first photo is of the smooth side the second is of the textured side.
I do not dislike the texture at all, in fact, I think it makes it very interesting. It is a little disconcerting when the product you receive doesn't meet up with your preconceived notions of what it should be - mostly because you made lots of assumptions with little facts. Even if Ali had said that it should have been completely smooth and offered to redo it, I do not believe I would have taken her up on the offer... okay, maybe I would have, but only so I could have another one for the other three. 😁
Ali couldn't have been nicer, the process was very smooth, and the product came back very quickly. Seriously, the worst thing I have to say about this is that my expectations were a bit off.. and now that you know what to expect, that won't happen if you decide you want one.
