A dog loving inventor has created a quirky ‘companion chair’ for herself and her dog to enjoy while one of them works and the other snoozes.
Simone Giertz and her three legged white terrier Scraps, have been experimenting with all sorts of creations during lockdown, including a dog selfie photo booth and now this chair to share.
Simone said: “I love my dog but she’s so needy that she always just wants to sit on me so that if there’s any part of my body that’s horizontal, she will try to lie on it.
“I started looking around for office chairs that are pet compatible, because she wants to sit on my lap, then she wants to get down, and back up again and it goes on and on.
“So I was thinking there has to be a chair that has a staircase that goes around it and a little bed on the side. I started searching for it and I got to the bottom of the Google image search page and it said there were no more results.
“Scraps would really prefer it if I turned myself into a dog bed. Since I’m not too keen on that project, I built her a chair instead. The Google search was like a bat signal to me that I needed to build it.”
After a series of trials and tests, Simone built an initial prototype under the watchful eye of Scraps but the dog was not interested in even trying it out.
Inventor Simone, a Swede living in the US, said: “It’s an interesting thing designing products for dogs because if they don’t like it, they just don’t like it and they won’t pretend and there’s not much you can do about it.”
So she tried again, this time with wider steps for Scrap to negotiate, then a paint job and a cushion to follow.
Simone, whose videos poke fun at herself, jokingly refers to herself as Queen of Shitty Inventions, said she painted the chair a ‘mouldy vomit colour’ and was disappointed by the blue cushion she made.
But a swap with red fabric worked perfectly and not only was Simone happy with the finished project, so was Scraps, the very inspiration behind the work.
Simone posted a video cataloguing the project and joked: “I feel this video is only going to make sense to people with small dogs who want to sit on their lap, if that’s not you, here’s your time reimbursement coupon.
"Now I want to see how we end up using this piece of furniture, and we might end up making it as a product."
