Why Wool
While we love all fibers for specific reasons, we landed on wool for our sweaters for the following reasons:
Wool is a natural insulator
It comes from an animal and it keeps them warm! Wool fibers are naturally crimped which form air pockets that trap air and heat that your body produces and keeps you warm (kind of like how you’re down jacket works)! Additionally, wool, when wet, is able to retain heat preventing the wearer from becoming cold.
What this means is that in a light drizzle or mist, your dog will stay dry. The innate properties of each wool fiber offers a light water repellency and you will see the water droplets bead up on the sweater. Of course in a heavy rain or downpour, you will need additional rain protection that is waterproof or water resistant.
Wool is naturally odor resistant
Wool naturally does not hold onto smells. You may have noticed that your gym clothes sometimes may smell like B.O.- that is a natural property of polyester to hold onto smell. Wool actually absorbs these odors and deactivates them, so you don’t need to worry about your wool sweater holding onto undesirable odors.
Wool is naturally stain resistant
Taking your dog camping and it’s going to be a little dirty? No problem! One the things we love about wool is that it doesn’t like to hold onto stains or dirt. If you get a little dirt on it, just let it dry and them brush it off!
Wool is low maintenance
Because of all the above properties, wool is actually less care intensive than some other fibers. We only actually wash our dog sweaters when it really needs it and to be honest, it’s only been a handful of times in the last 6 years. And the best part, a quick hand wash only takes about 10 minutes from start to finish.