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Trinity Woman Designer To The Dogs

From Patricia C. Patterson

Baarney models a T-shirt suitable for any environmentally conscious canine. The shirt is one of the dog wear created by Trinity resident Patricia C. Patterson for her new company Read My Paws.

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By Cheryl  Bentley | The Suncoast News

Published: September 3, 2008

If you're a chic pooch, of course, you must have the perfect running togs to run with Mom and Dad, or just the right motorcycle gear when you and your humans roar around on the Hog.

Read My Paws to the rescue. The line of doggie - and a few human - fashions started by Trinity resident Patricia C. Patterson sports the latest thing in doggie dress. Clothes for dogs feature such canine-appropriate slogans as "I'm Wearing Nothing Under This Shirt," "Go Green, Get a Hybrid," and "Dogtoberfest."

One shirt from her organic line, "Recycle. Adopt a Dog" was featured in the summer edition of the glossy quarterly magazine Modern Dog.

The dog line is a labor of love for Patterson, who has had her own Holiday-based Patterson Marketing Group for 14 years and was previously a marketing director for AT&T Paradyne in Largo.

Patterson credits the inspiration for the line to her dog Baarney, whom the Pattersons got in 2005 after having weathered a problematic 2004. Then, her husband Robin went through a difficult cure for prostate cancer and her office was destroyed by Hurricane Jeanne.

Earlier, when dating, the Pattersons had laughingly considered getting a Bedlington, a terrier with an uncanny resemblance to a lamb, and naming him Baarney. They remembered their discussion after having survived 2004. It was time for a Baarney, they decided.

"He has changed our life," Patterson said, words typically rapid, as if keeping pace with Patterson's busy life. Her eyes filled with tears. "When I got Baarney, I discovered this love, my love for animals."

Patterson got the idea for the clothing line when in typical high-energy style, she put together a team for a Race for the Cure in Trinity, a run raising funds to fight breast cancer.

As a proud mom, she signed up Baarney as a member of her team of 50. Baarney, she smiled, raised more money than any other team member. Her team members all had shirts designed especially for the run.

Patterson made a shirt for Baarney, too. It was a hit.

"People just went crazy," Patterson recalled. "I thought maybe I'm on to something."

Read My Paws officially launched in March. "I wanted something that reflects the life style that dogs and owners share," she explained.

That style includes a Green Paws line of organic shirts with slogans like "Save Paper, Use a Tree," and a Diva Paws inspired by Tabaatha, another Bedlington who joined the Patterson family last year.

Tabaatha, said Patterson, "is full of herself." The first shirt in that line reads, "Nobody Tells the Princess No."

For the biker dog, Biker Paws includes a bandanna with "I Love the Feel of Bugs in My Teeth" and a shirt reading "I've Got Big Pipes." A Zen line is also on tap with slogans like, "Be the Treat" in observance of Zen's emphasis on being.

Patterson gets ideas for the slogans and then works with a freelance designer. The shirts retail for $20 or $25 organic.

Ever mindful of the gifts her two dogs have given her, Patterson is researching suitable animal rescue groups with which to partner on projects in gratitude for the change Baarney and Tabaatha have brought into the Pattersons' life. "I'm not a person who watches Oprah, but I heard her say, 'Follow your heart.'

The woman who found she had a talent for marketing after studying accounting at Villanova University, in Pennsylvania, has no doubt her doggie wear will take off.

"It is something I can do in retirement, but more than that, it is something I can give back."

For more information visit the Ready My Paws href=http://www.readmypaws.com> Web site.

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