By Hannah Lee
As the owner of three rescue dogs – Molly, Pickles and Jupiter (left and top of page) – and a volunteer at Farm Friends Rescue, Mandy German has long supported animal shelters/rescues. Near the end of 2017, she heard about a nonpro t called Pearls for Pups Co. that sells handmade earrings to bene t animal rescues, and she just had to get a pair. She loved them so much, she had Pearls for Pups design a set of crystal earrings for her wedding. The group named the design after Mandy’s coonhound/foxhound mix, Molly, and now sells them on its website. “All of the other crystal (earrings) were named after dogs,” Mandy says. “They all had Instagram accounts, so we kind of felt a little bit of peer pressure to also create an account.” Created in March 2018, the pups’ Instagram account is now at almost 1,200 followers, many of which are dog accounts. “We didn’t go out to become anything with the account,” Mandy says. “It’s for fun and to make connections.”
Run by Jessica Trull, this account is all about showing off Suki, a small, white schnauzer pug (who might also be wheaten terrier), and her funniest moments and interactions with Jessica’s daughter, Kristen, 13, and son, Frank, 7. On the account, followers can nd appearances from her two other dogs, Bella, a Jack Russell terrier, and Bailey, a pointer mix adopted from the Chatham County Animal Shelter. Jessica started the account because of her love of photography, which blossomed from watching her photographer father, Donald Trull.
“[The dogs] are a huge part of our lives,” Jessica says. “We include them in most things that we do, regardless if it’s a ride to the store or a family vacation. I don’t consider Suki a dog in uencer as of yet, but maybe one day.”

@rafa_the_wolfhound
131 followers
Rafa, a smiling wolfhound with long, gangly legs, is often highlighted on Instagram enjoying walks and playtime around Fearrington. But it wasn’t always that way. Before he landed in the care of Nathan Furr and Emma Zunker in 2018, he came to Chatham Animal Rescue & Education as a neglected dog weighing barely 75 pounds, with hardly any hair. Despite his appearance, Emma and Nathan say, he was just the pup they were looking for. When you looked past Rafa’s skin-and-bones appearance and his lack of hair, Nathan says, there was a really special dog. Now with a modest 100-something followers, but at a healthy 100 pounds, Rafa has regained his long gray-and-white coat. “I started [the Instagram account] a few weeks after we got him, kind of as a joke, but so as to not ll up either one of our personal Facebook and Instagram feeds with pictures of our dog,” Nathan says. “When we got there, we ended up connecting with canine in uencers, so to speak.”
Read the original article from the August/September 2019 Issue:
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