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From Xena to Dog Butts
Uh Huh, you heard that right, Xena is somewhat responsible for Nothin' Butt Dogs. Uh, didn't she have a horse, not a dog?  You would be correct, sir.  She had in fact a beautiful horse named Argo, who was every bit as smart as Lassie and offered comedy relief from time to time, but no, no dog for Xena. So how the heck did we get from there to here?

Wellllll we (me and Judes) met 10+ years ago on a Xena message board (for zeus sakes, where does the time go?).  We were both there quite a few months and didn't even notice each other.  Which wasn't too surprising from my side, since Judes (the artist behind Nothin' Butt Dogs) rationed out her posts like she was on a budget.  I (that would be me, Les, the voice behind Nothin Butt Dogs), on the other hand, was posting left and right with my hokey lil' stories and poems.  How she didn't notice me, since I was annoyingly everywhere, I do not know.  We both had a mutual buddy though (who I noticed recently has a Hollywood writing credit for a film. Way to go JC!) and finally stumbled over each other on one of JC's threads.  I think I was telling Judes she was wrong about something. You can't help but notice someone who's tellin' you you're wrong, especially when they're right (as I usually am. Hah!).

At some point after that, I discovered she had quite the drawing talent and she found out I had tons of hokey lil' ideas running around in my head and she soon started bringing them to life in art.  Sort of cool having your very own Picasso at your fingertips.  So our creative collaboration started with Xena.  Woo we wasted a ton of time creating stuff for that show.  Need proof? Here you go, huffin' and puffin' gabs, an early animation and the hokey poem that goes with it. And here's one of our first cartoons, Xenapot, which only makes sense if you know that the series finale ended with Gabby, the sidekick, sailing off into the sunset, talking to a pot, that held Xena's ashes (They killed Xena? What were they thinkin'? Ah not to worry, it's the Xenaverse where nobody ever stays dead).

I won't bore you with anymore Xena stuff, but suffice it say this time wastage for Xena went on for quite awhile, until we discovered we had another obsession in common, Dogs.  Our creative ventures started to veer off in that direction, probably circa-Season 5 of Xena (their big jumpin' the shark year).   Most of our early dog stuff was about my two Cairn Terriers, Murph and Maddie.  I think we focused on my two, because Judes had lost her beloved Terrier Mix, Bumber, so she was dog-less for a few years before she rescued Idgie, her current Jack Russell Terrier.  Of the dog stuff we created together, Cairntoon is my favorite, which introduced my Collie, Oz.  Judes drew it in that same pencil style she used for Xenapot.  This leaning towards humorous cartoons was fixin' (Did I mention I'm Texan? Just had to drop a fixin' in this here write up at some point ;-)) to come in real handy, as we stumble onto our dog butt idea.  It was during one of our marathon phone calls, where we basically just talk about nothing (Seinfeld has nothing on us :-)).  In this instance, it was about decorating my kitchen and joking about how popular chickens are for kitchens. Vedy kitchy dontchaknow.  Oh! Oh! you know what would be perfect? A chicken butt clock.  Oh no wait. It has to be a cow, because the tail can swish for the second hand.   Oh yeh, that's got kitchy written all over it.

Soon thereafter, Judes sends me these quick sketches. Of course, I loved them (Have I mentioned I'm a huge fan of Mama's Family? Just to give you a reference point for my taste :-))but I thought you know what would be even cuter, Murph's butt.  I had a couple of butt shots of Murph that I shared with her and we then proceeded to have a whole discussion of how cute his butt was.  I'm sure others would be more focused on the likes of say Brad Pitt's butt.  Not us, we were having an in depth discussion of all the cutest dog butts there are.  Judes, you just have to draw some dog butts.  Chickens and Cows have nothing on the adorableness of a Dog.  Besides, you know there's got to be dog folks out there just like me that would totally get the humor of it.  She thought I was nutz, but went along with it and drew several dog butt sketches.  The slogan, Nothin' Butt Dogs, came soon thereafter from Judes and we knew (well actually me mostly. Judes for the life of her couldn't imagine anybody liking it) we had a pretty good idea.  Unfortunately, we had no where to go with it at that time.  We both had, and still do, fairly demanding full time regular joe jobs, that just didn't leave enough time to design, market, produce, bill and ship products.  So our lil' idea languished on the shelf for another 2 or 3 yrs, until I stumbled on Cafepress.

Woowee, what a revolutionary idea Cafepress was.  They do all the tedious work, producing, billing and shipping, and we get to do all the fun stuff, designing and marketing.  Getting to be creative was then and is now the main reason we wanted to do this.  It is such a high knowing there's folks out there wearing one of our designs.   After discovering Cafepress, we spent a few months refining our idea and designing a webpage, before actually opening our store for business. Here's some of the first drafts of Nothin' Butt Doxies and Nothin' Butt Cairns.  I don't know how noticeable it is, but Judes had done more of a gradient fill of the colors and it lost some of the cartoon-ishness that was in her original sketches.  She's still grumbling at me 4 years later, that she had to go back and redo several of the designs to capture the original cartoon-ishness (I don't know,  I still say I was right on that one. Hah! see, right again. ;-)).

Fast forward to the present (2008) and we are embarking on a new creative endeavor, Animations, that parody TV shows with a dog twist to them.  Animation is really Judes' first love. Coupled with my bottomless well of TV knowledge, we hope to bring ya'll some humorous (one hopes) parodies.  First up, Star Trek Voyager, since I've been totally obsessed with this show over the last year (driving Judes mad I might add).  Great cast (Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, Robert Picardo and a few others), high re-watchability factor and with its quirky charm with leanings towards campy, a perfect candidate for parody.  I was driving Judes over the edge endlessly talking about it, so I think it's her hope to get this one out of the way first and no longer having to hear about Voyager (I've actually got quite a few more Voyager ideas floating around in my head, but for Judes' sanity, maybe we should go with Brady Bunch next).

Not to worry, there will be more dog butts on the horizon too.  I think we still have about 100 more breeds to go.  Not to mention, additions for our other designs as well.   So keep checking back to see what's new.

Les and Judes...