The Appeal of Animal Jewelry
By ContentMart Editor

Animal jewelry has always been popular. Even in ancient Egypt, people wore jewelry fashioned after animals like the cat and the ibis. In modern times, you see animal jewelry captured in charm bracelets and necklaces. Why is animal jewelry still popular today? Here are a few reasons to consider when you think about how appealing animal jewelry can be.

1) Animals are nice to look at.

Who can ever get tired of watching birds fly or kittens play? Because animals are fun to look at in nature, jewelers use them in their work. People often go to nature for inspiration and then use it in their creations. Animals have a simple elegance to them that is always complementary to a nice outfit.

2) Animal designs don�t go out of style.

Fads and trends are just that; they are here today and gone soon after. Animal designs seem to withstand all of that because they don�t change. Over the course of human existence, animals have remained in about the same state as they were when we first saw them. Polka-dots, loops, zigzags, and starburst bracelets all go out of style at some point. Animals have a degree of permanency that allows for constant design inspiration.

3) The animal depicted in the jewelry represents the person wearing it.

My mother has a leopard lapel that she got from her mother as a birthday present. She and her family come from South Africa, so the leopard lapel reflects great significance to her roots. My mother likes to wear it on special occasions, to church, and just for fun because it reminds her of home.

Other people wear certain animal jewelry because it is a representation of them. Someone who wears a lot of dolphin jewelry might have an affinity for the ocean, freedom, playfulness, and intelligence. Someone else might like elephant jewelry because they are bold, strong, and majestic. Overall, animal jewelry can be a symbolic interpretation of the individual and an appealing display for others to observe.



"You Are The Greatest Teacher"
By Ron Hevener

Having a kennel and loving dogs, I'm lucky enough to meet a lot of people they are important to; people from all walks of life. Today, the dogs we love and care for have a great affect on how we look at the world around us. Dogs are in the news, in movies, books, and all kinds of advertisements. What is their appeal? We know the answer to that. Dogs appeal to every sense we have, from visual to touch, and the magical result is the most powerful appeal of all are emotional.
Forget about the evolutionary history of dogs and worrying about how they may have come into being and traveling to exotic places to find the last remaining members of that breed on Earth. That's all grand in a National Geographic kind of way, but the truth is lost in so many forgotten memories that it doesn't matter to the dog in your life right now. What matters is the diversity of this species, and the possibility that there was no single original breed.
Do I believe in spontaneous genetics and things like that? Oh, yes; very much so. I also believe the emotional make-up of a living creature, and its mentality, are affected by its physical appearance. But, that could be my years of dog shows, raising just about every breed of dog there is at one time or another, or the artist in me speaking.
We all know our own personalities can rub off on our dogs. We know dogs are different from cats or birds or horses and other animals in their basic nature. Along those lines, customers at our kennel often ask which puppy in a litter is the ruler, which is the most loving or which is the most playful. Sometimes, when looking at a puppy by itself and searching for an emotional connection with this prospective fur-child, customers will ask if I think the pup will turn out this way or that. When I say it depends on them more than anything else, they are often surprised. The dog is going to learn from you, I say. You are the greatest teacher.
Here at our kennels, sometimes we raise whole litters together and we have a graduation system, like in school. Littermates start out together, but as they become more dominant, or according to their growth and the special feeding they may require along the way, they move up the ladder into the next run. They haven't lost sight of their littermates because they are in the next kennel run beside them. And the new kennel mates aren't strangers either because they've been housed next to each other for a while. The result is, our litters don't have just one dominant pup with a bunch of followers. Instead, what we have is a bunch of confident, independent thinkers.
When I say, "You are the greatest teacher" I'm not speaking about rigid discipline such as one endures in Obedience classes. Maybe "rigid" isn't the right word for that, but I think it illustrates the difference between fundamental training and the invisible "something" beyond that which develops between you and your dog just by traveling the same path in life. In my novel 'Fate of the Stallion,' this mysterious bond is expressed in a scene where Dan Marshall senses the presence of an Arabian stallion running along the river beside him. The horse seems to be calling him, as if saying - Find me! I am yours!- and the story reveals the parallels of their lives, showing how man and stallion share the same fate. Likewise, in "The Blue Ribbon", a novel set in the competitive world of dog shows, there is a scene called "Miles To Go." In this scene, Robert Sheffield, a dog show judge loved by two different women who own rival kennels, is hiking in the Canadian woods with his dog, reflecting on love. If you'll notice, the path in the woods symbolizes Robert's own path in life, and his dog is right there beside him. Like many of us do, Robert is thinking to his dog in a mental conversation, wondering if he has made the right decision by letting the woman he really