two pairs beats four of a kind

It seems the larger a company gets - or the more departments it divides itself into - the more difficult it is for it to get from the inkling of a need to product. The classic cartoon with the various departmental views of a swing humorously depicts the problem.

So it was with dog boots. Before, about 5 years ago, you could only buy dog boots in sets of four, all identical in size. Maybe all of the dogs I've seen are freaks of nature and there really are dogs with four equal-sized paws.

Maybe it's all the inbreeding that accounted for Starbuck's front paws being larger than his rear paws. He waddled around with his ill-fitting boots, like one wearing fins on land. He ended up casting the boots off and ran around tracking mud wherever his happy, bootless paws took him. I assumed wrong that the size difference would be accounted for when you bought a set of four. Makes you wonder if the key personnel in the dog boot industry interact with the end user.

The last time I was in a pet store, while the Buckster was still alive, I noticed that there was a neatly stocked display of dog boots, sold in pairs. There was even a place a dog could sit down and try them on.