​

It started with a tiny, fuzzy invader.

Seven years ago, we found Dingdang—our 4-pound Pomeranian—curled up in a cardboard box outside our apartment, shivering. Her fur was the color of burnt caramel, her tail a fluffy plume that never stopped wagging, even when she tripped over her own paws chasing dust bunnies.
She was loud: yapping at squirrels, “talking” to us by growling playfully when we scratched her belly, and stealing our socks (my black ones, my wife’s polka-dot ones) to bury them in the backyard.
But she was also quiet: curling into a perfect doughnut on our laps during thunderstorms, nuzzling our faces when we cried, and always, always knowing when one of us needed an extra nuzzle.

Dingdang wasn’t just a dog. She was family.

Then came the day her tail stopped wagging. A vet’s visit, a soft “I’m sorry,” and suddenly, our home felt hollow. The silence was louder than her barks.
We stared at her empty bed, at the chewed-up sock she’d hidden under the couch, at the spot on the windowsill where she’d sit to watch birds—now just a ghost of fur.
My wife, who’d always been the practical one, started crying at random moments: while making coffee, folding laundry, even while laughing at a TV show. “I can’t stop thinking about her,” she’d say, voice breaking. “I want to do something. Something that makes her feel… here.”

That’s when she found felting.

One rainy afternoon, I came home to find her hunched over our kitchen table, a box of wool roving and needles in front of her. “I took a class,” she said, eyes red but determined. “I want to make a Dingdang. Not a photo, not a trinket—something that feels like her.”

Weeks passed. I’d catch her at 2 a.m., squinting at a tiny paw print she’d stitched, or muttering, “No, her ears were floppier.” She messed up the first three attempts: one too lumpy, one with a tail that looked like a carrot, one where she accidentally pricked her finger (blood on the wool, which she framed anyway, calling it “Dingdang’s First Masterpiece”).
But finally, one evening, she held up a small figure: a Pomeranian with burnt caramel fur, a fluffy tail, and a tiny pink nose. Her eyes were stitched with golden thread—“Her ‘I’m guilty’ look,” my wife said, smiling through tears.

I didn’t say anything at first. I just stared. Then, without meaning to, I started crying. Not the loud, heaving kind—quiet, shaky sobs. Because that little figure? It was her. Not a memory, but a presence. The way her tail curled just so, the way her ears tilted back like she was ready to bark at a squirrel… it was Dingdang, frozen in a moment of pure, happy life.

That night, we sat on the couch, hugging the felting. “What if,” my wife said softly, “we made one for someone else? Someone who’s missing their dog like we’re missing her?”

And just like that, Dingdang’s legacy wasn’t just a stuffed toy. It became a mission.

We started small: posting Dingdang’s story online, then offering to felt custom pets for friends who’d lost theirs. The first order was for a labrador named Max, whose owner said, “He used to sleep on my feet.
I need something that feels like his weight.” We made a large, floppy lab, stitched with the same wool Max’s owner had saved from his old bed. When she received it, she wrote: “I cried until I laughed. It’s like he’s still here, keeping my feet warm.”

Now, years later, our little apartment studio has grown into a workshop where we work with pet parents worldwide. Each order comes with a note: “Tell us about your fur baby—their quirks, their habits, the way they made you laugh.” We keep a “Dingdang Box” of mementos: a chewed-up tennis ball, a sock with teeth marks, a photo of Dingdang mid-zoomies (her tail a blur). They remind us why we do this: because love doesn’t die when a pet leaves.
It transforms—into wool, into thread, into a little piece of forever.

Dingdang left us too soon, but she taught us this: the best way to honor what you love is to make it live again. And so, every felting we stitch, every custom order we fill, we’re not just making art. We’re making memories feel like home.

Dingdang would’ve wanted it that way.