Dogs of the World

Ideally, every time we make a dog name tag we’d meet the dog in question personally, shake his or her paw and fit the tag ourselves instead of posting it. Not practical. Instead, we decided to *virtually* meet each dog, especially the unusual breeds, by making a cigarette card about the breed. This is not practical either, we do it anyway.

Everyone who orders from us and tells us the breed of their dog or dogs (it’s not compulsory) gets a dog cigarette card hand-made specifically for their breed. 

Show Me The Dogs

Okay okay, here we go. Our original idea was to use recreated vintage cigarette cards or tea cards, anyone old enough to remember these? Ahem, I am. 

What’s the first thing we discovered? The lovely hand-painted ones – Arthur Wardle is our favourite artist of these – well, there are only about 50 of them. That’s 50 dog breeds. When you insure your dog your insurance company refers to a list of around 750 different breeds, crossbreeds, variations of breeds. 

You won’t find the likes of the Cockapoo, Labradoodle, or Leonberger in the 1930s and 40s (to be fair, the Leonberger dates back to the 1830s, the first one coming to these shores at the end of WWII). Consequently, we had to make our own. Our own cigarette cards that is, not dogs.

A Lovely Leonberger
A Lovely Labradoodle
A Handsome Korthals Griffon

Classic Dog Cigarette Cards

The dog ‘trading’ cards we like best were indeed cigarette cards, some tea companies cottoned on to the idea and made their own versions of the cards, but in the main it was cigarettes, there’s no hiding from this.

Apparently the cards were used to stiffen the pack, but quickly became collectibles no-doubt encouraging the purchase of more fags. Let’s just focus on the dogs shall we? Always a good idea. Here are three of Arthur Wardle’s that we’ve recreated, always crediting Arthur Wardle himself of course and using them on the basis they were free and in the public domain, as ours are.

Arthur Wardle English Setter
Arthur Wardle Dalmatian
Arthur Wardle Irish Setter

Dogs and Friends

This (below) is a non-Arthur Wardle range we found and features lovely black & white photos from circa 1936. Everything we made we call ‘Dogs of the World‘. On the reverse, in the limited space, we write what can discover about each new breed we encounter. Here are those Dogs and Friends…

French Bulldog
Yorkshire Terrier Cigarette Card
Pointer Cigarette Card

Make Your Own Cigarette Cards

Working out how to print accurately, double-sided on a cheap inkjet printer was a challenge. A lot of the ubiquitous online experts say it’s not possible. It is, I’ll provide a detailed tutorial at some stage. Until then though I have to write, find (and buy) photos for, layout and print out dozens of dog cigarette cards every day! Not complaining, who would?! 

We’re looking forward to sending YOU one when you become a Ten Year Tags Dog ID Tag customer! 

Thanks ever so much,

Tagmaster

Oh yes, here are some of our faves:

South African Boerboel        Brittany Spaniel

Spanish Water Dog       Welsh Springer Spaniel

Cocker Spaniel         Cockapoo         Dachshund

Basset Hound

I’ve started writing the How to make your own cigarette cards feature that some people, somewhere might find useful. Admittedly it’s a specialised requirement. The accurate double-sided printing with a cheap inkjet printer part of it might just help!