My name is Rachel Elias, I am a woman, an artist, a daughter, a sister, but most of all, you guessed it, I am the bowtie hound’s mom!

My passion lies with animals and their welfare, which is why a portion of every sale goes to support animal rehabilitation in several local shelters. As long as I have lived, my family and I have supported shelter rescue. I personally always take the hard cases, the creatures with special needs. I do this because I know how hard it is to have special needs and how isolating that can be.

Ernie, the bowtie hound himself, is my special needs boy. I rescued him on October 20th, 2022. He had a traumatic past where he was physically and mentally brutalized and disfigured. It only made me want him more. He politely wears a bowtie to take the focus away from his disfigurement. And let me tell you, he looks dapper. It was about six months after I rescued him until he let me hear him bark for the first time. It really makes me wonder, what on Earth did this poor creature endure to silence him this way.

A portion of every bowtie hound productions sale goes to support local animal shelters and money that goes to the shelters will help support the programs that enabled Ernie’s rehabilitation after a life of severe trauma and abuse. These programs are designed to restore an abused dog to a place where they are functional. Specifically, Ernie went to the Prison Program, which may sound terrible, but it is actually an amazing program and has incredible success. Select dogs get chosen to go to this program, where they are assigned a prisoner (who is monitored and trusted) to live with. During their time in the program, the dog and the prisoner work together to learn trust, house training, skills like sit, stay, down, roll over, come, etc. They are crate trained, fed, loved, and cared for by the prisoner and let’s face it, everyone else that works there. During this period of rehabilitation, the dog begins to develop a sense of safety and self-confidence. Once the dog has completed the program and graduates, they are ready to re-enter society and be adopted. It also gives the prisoners a job to do and it helps them too.

The skills these dogs will learn during their time in the prison will carry them the rest of their lifetime and it makes them so much more adoptable to busy folks that might not have the time or the patience to train a dog. The Prison Program also gets dogs physically out of the rescue to make room for new dogs that are taken from the kill shelters. All the way around, these shelters/rescues need our support and that’s exactly what the money from these sales will do. Help with food, housing, vaccines, sterilization, rehabilitation, and basic utilities to help keep the shelter running, and keep programs like the one my own bowtie hound when through, alive and well.

Me and Ernie thank you for your support!