The Search for the Perfect Sweater for Otto

It all started with this:

Otto wearing my cat scarf.  We realized he actually seemed to enjoy wearing it (Otto's always cold), but...well...it's a scarf.  It wasn't going to stay on once he started moving around--not without a safety pin or something, and perhaps not even then.

So we went in search of something better--a sweater for Otto.  Our first attempt yielded this:

I'm sure it was warm, but I'm also pretty sure Otto found it mortifying.  (I can't see why--it has a buttonable flap where his rear-end would be if he were a human--nothing humiliating about that, right?)  We took it back to CVS.

Otto then had a chance to model one of my Christmas presents--a scarf/hood combo with hand-warmers, to only slightly better effect:

Oh yeah...did I mention it has ears?  Clearly, this wasn't going to work long-term, either.

In between all this there was a charcoal turtleneck sweater that kind of made Otto look like he was heading off to his beat-poetry performance.  And while his poetry is pretty good, his sweater was doing nothing to improve it.

Finally, we hit upon what we think is a winner.  It's perfect:  soft, plenty of room, and will probably stay on him.  (We had to buy a dog's size Medium (yes, MEDIUM) for that to work.  (What does that make Otto--Cocker Spaniel-sized?  Sheltie-sized?  Sheesh...)  Anyway, here it is!:

Perfect, right?  Fits him exactly, nothing embarrassing about it (pay no attention to the dog bone on his back), and won't come off as soon as he starts moving.  Mission Accomplished!

As a humorous side-note, we attempted to give this sweater to Wanda, thinking that it might fit her well and Otto could use the Jack Kerouac sweater.  Wanda disagreed.  She slunk through the bedroom, clearly ticked off at us.  When several minutes went by and I didn't see her, I started having dreadful thoughts that perhaps she had gone downstairs, gotten it caught on something and was now dangling helplessly from the stairs, waiting for a rescue.  How wrong I was about that.  I found her under the loveseat, about 20 feet from where we'd put it on her, with the sweater off to the side and Wanda hunkered down in what could only be called a fighting stance.  "Try to put that on me one more time," her eyes seemed to be saying, "and there's going to be trouble."  I'll be sleeping with one eye open for a while, I guess.

We kept the Sixties sweater, not because Otto loves it, but because he already pulled out a few threads, rendering it unreturnable.  Ah, well...those coffee shops can get chilly in the winter.