Cruella de Vil should have found better puppies for her coats

I’ve had this lasting, lingering problem with 101 Dalmatians since I first saw it as a kid. It’s almost as if the efficiency center of my brain is gnawing away at my thoughts, rendering it impossible to think about the plot line of the film. Now, with the release of the trailer for Cruella, I’m back to thinking about it again.

Cruella de Vil is an idiot for trying to kill Dalmatians. There are much better dogs to make coats out of.

Now look, before you start sending furious emails, please understand that I am absolutely opposed to the fur trade, and by extension using dozens of puppies to make a coat. This is a a purely hypothetical exercise. I’m just saying that IF you HAD to use dogs to make a coat, you could do so much better.

“I was born brilliant,” Cruella says in the trailer — “Hell no you weren’t,” says James in reaction to the trailer. Let me explain why.

If you’re going to make a coat out of an animal out of a necessity for warmth I get it, especially right now. But why in the world would you choose a short hair dog to coat-ify? It’s not like there’s only one kind of dog in the world, so you have to settle for a short hair.

This would be the equivalent of getting a floofy winter hat, but wanting it to be buzzcut first. It just makes no damn sense.

Dalmatians originate from Croatia, more specifically the historical region of Dalmatia, which is situated along the bay of Kotor. The weather in this region is fairly nice all year long, with an average winter temperature of 44 degrees. This relatively mild climate is perfect for a short hair dog like a Dalmatian to be bred, and exist in happiness. It also makes it UTTERLY TERRIBLE TO BE USED AS A COAT.

Unless your primary reason for a puppy coat is using the most amount of puppies possible, then aiming for a Dalmatian pups is just a mess — literally and figuratively.

Let’s remove the puppy element of this for a just a second. The average adult Dalmatian is between 23 and 24 inches tall. Now, I don’t know how that translates to a coat size, but a rough estimation tells me that you’d need 3-4 fully grown dogs to make a coat. Why not just use a larger breed of dog better suited to the task, and eliminate a large chunk of the dog killing you need to perpetuate in the process?

Now, considering you’d need around 3-4 adult dogs to make a coat it makes the concept of using 101 puppies even more overkill. Absolutely no efficiency in this operation.

Okay, so you’ve got a bunch of spotty puppy pelts to make a coat. Gross, but what’s done is done. Now, how do you plan to make this into a coat without it turning into an utter mess? You’d need the world’s most talented seamstress to pull off pattern matching a whole bunch of organic, random spots and having a finished product that didn’t look like a 4-year-old’s finger painting.

Cruella de Vil really didn’t think about this process at all, did she?

Please don’t be upset if I pick the dog you love, or don’t pick the dog you hate. There was really careful consideration that went into this. The temptation is to just pick a giant, fluffy dog like a Samoyed or Newfoundland — but they were built for extremely cold places, not necessarily suited for England. We’re aiming to find the right dog for the coat here.

And that is ... the Pyrenean Mountain Dog.

This adorable future coat was break for the mountains of Western Europe, meaning it’s warm, but not overly fluffy. It has a luxurious, soft coat — and is significantly larger than a Dalmatian. I estimate you’d need two of these dogs to make a coat, drastically limiting the life lost.

Pyrenean Mountain Dogs also have an average life expectancy of 10-12 years, vs. 12-14 years for a Dalmatian, meaning you’re cutting short less overall dog life. Not saying this makes it okay, but a little better.

Cruella de Vil could learn a lot from me. Please don’t yell at me, internet.