The Most Nerve-Racking Window We've Ever Created!
If you've ever walked past our shop, you'll know we love creating window displays that make people stop, smile and hopefully take a photo. We've had everything from The Dog Wears Barkley & Fetch to our Christmas scenes, but this latest one might just have been our most stressful yet!
With England reaching the knockout stages, we decided to transform our window into an England football squad... with a Barkley & Fetch twist.
Instead of famous footballers, we introduced our very own England Dog XI.
Meet the team:
- 🧤 Pawdan Stickford
- 🦴 Ezri Bonesa
- 🐕 Doglan Rice
- 🦴 John Bones
- 🐾 Bark Guehi
- 🐶 Bark-ayo Saka
- 🏆 Hairy Canine (Captain)
- 🦴 Chewed Bellingham
- 🐕 Barkus Rashford
- 🐶 Dogbie Mainoo
- 🐕 Collie Watkins
Every player is one of our display dogs wearing Barkley & Fetch collars, harnesses and leads, complete with their own personalised name card.
Three Dogs on a Shirt
One of our favourite parts of the display had to be designing the England badge.
Rather than the traditional three lions, we created our own version featuring three running dogs surrounded by little red bones instead of roses. It was instantly recognisable as England, but unmistakably Barkley & Fetch.
Match Day Pressure
Here's the part nobody sees...
We spent Wednesday building the entire display.
Positioning eleven dogs, making player name cards, designing the team sheet, laying the artificial grass, arranging footballs and adding all the finishing touches took hours.
Then we stood back, admired our work...
...and suddenly realised England were playing that very evening.
If England had been knocked out, our brand-new football window would have lasted less than twenty-four hours!
There was a very real chance we'd be back in the shop first thing on Thursday morning taking the whole thing apart before most people had even seen it.
Talk about bad timing!
So instead of sitting back and relaxing after all that work, we spent the evening watching the match with slightly more nerves than usual. We weren't just cheering England on for football reasons—we were desperately hoping our window display would survive another round!
Thankfully, England did the job and our Dog XI lived to play another day.
Spot the Details
As with all our window displays, we couldn't resist adding plenty of little jokes for people to discover.
Our favourites include:
- Hairy Canine proudly wearing the captain's armband.
- John Bones anchoring the defence.
- Doglan Rice controlling midfield.
- Collie Watkins leading the attack.
- A giant St Bernard goalkeeper called Pawdan Stickford complete with his own enormous stick!
We've even started adding a few extra touches, including bottles of Lickozade Sport, because every football team needs refreshments at half-time!
Worth Every Minute
The best part of creating these displays is watching people's reactions.
Children stop to point at the dogs, football fans laugh when they read the player names, and plenty of people pause to take photos through the window.
Those moments make all the planning, designing and late-night worrying worthwhile.
Now we're just hoping England keep winning... because we'd quite like our England Dog XI to stay on the pitch for a little while longer! 🐶⚽🏆
