so welcome to the new home of scruffy dog!  is it just me or is there a bit of new-car smell around these new digs?

we are so incredibly thrilled to bring you the next generation of scruffy dog photography — the site and blog in one … one-stop shopping, everything at your fingertips.  i’ll admit, i was a little teary-eyed to see the old website go … although my web-designer was pretty good to pull the Band-aid quickly, not warning me when this new site was actually going live and the old one was being laid to rest (cue sad, mournful music).  soon that sweet old site will be a distant memory, i am sure.

she served me well though, that old site and the old blog.  but as my main workhorse-combo for almost five years now, they didn’t owe me anything and it was time for both of them to be put to bed.  still, for you SDP diehards, you’ll notice that we’ve retained the same colours that we’ve used from the very inception of scruffy dog. so that aspect hasn’t changed.  our new branding with the jumping scruffy dog — merrick goobernuts mcscruffy to be exact — is front and centre, of course … and well, seeing it all come together after months and months of planning, worry, work, and stress … well, it’s just all pretty thrilling.  i hope you like the new home as much as we do!

although from your perspective, the transformation appears seamless — a piece of cake, a slice of pie, a cone of ice cream, a bowl of stew, a plate of curry … no wait, i’m just making myself hungry — in fact, this has been a rather extensive undertaking.  much more than just a few decorations and format changes, we not only abandoned the old site and blog for a complete redesign, but also made a big move to a new server … something akin to an epic overseas haul where we’ve packed everything up neatly into a big storage container and shipped it halfway around the world through turbulent seas and seemingly uncharted waters.  and in my case — in our busiest fall season ever — having a crack team of movers and “unpackers” at the other end of the haul to get everything settled before my arrival.  of course, you have to know that i’m a decorator at heart, so i just can’t bring myself to trust the actual copy and photo layout to anyone else.  yup, that’s me: neurotic home owner in there with the movers, repacking the boxes so nothing gets broken.

so while you may still find the odd scrap of forgotten packing tape lingering in the corners, my crack-team of movers has been amazingly thorough with the new SDP site and blog, and we should be relatively glitch-free.

while you will see some of the old content and copy from the former site, there is a lot of new content on this new SDP.  there are new pages and new information… check out all the new information under the for photographers tab, and the raft of new testimonials under kind words.  all of the former information about dog health and nutrition, and links and research into vaccinations can be found under the dog info tab.

if you enjoy the SDP blog and would like to be alerted via email whenever new entries are made, be sure to use the subscribe function over there on the slider tab along the left side of the blog.  many SDP followers receive their SDP blog-feed this way so that they never miss a post.  it’s easy.

and if you don’t already follow SDP on facebook in order to keep up with the latest with daily photos and fun (why not?!) you can get there by using the facebook slider tab on the left as well.

and last but not least, before sending you off to sniff out all the new corners of the new digs and mark your territory with comments, i need to give a huge, big, scruffy thank you to Sarah of The Design Truth, for all of her incredible work behind the scenes. i can’t find the words to describe Sarah’s enthusiasm and calmness through what could have been a nightmare of a process, not to mention her phenomenal eye and attention for detail.  it’s super hard to find good help these days, almost impossible to find someone who you have to tell something to only once — Sarah is one of those.  you tell her and she not only gets it, she gets ‘er done.  thank you BIG, Sarah, for everything that you are, for your magic dust, wizardry and super secret awesomesauce.

also a big thanks and kudos goes out to a man whom i’ve never even met — Nikil Jose of ninth notion.  dude, you rock!  Nikil is the web developer master who handled the host switch, and did all the “dirty work” (as i call it) … domains, email accounts, transfers, SEO … the “ick” stuff, the stuff that gives me nightmares. with almost five years worth of site, files, blog and SEO development, i realize this move was a little more extensive than some … not to mention that the client is a little more of a nervous-nellie than most!  so big thanks to you too, Nikil!

so, without further delay, welcome to the new generation of scruffy dog.  we hope you like it here!  sniff around, get a feel for things, and like i said, if you’d like to mark your territory a little, feel free to pee in a few corners … er … leave a few comments here and there.  enjoy!