Archie's Sweater

So..... a few days ago our family found ourselves on the way to get a puppy. This puppy was a long time coming, a lot of discussion, a lot of persuading. Me, personally? Not a big fan of puppies. I like dogs! I LOVE dogs, especially when they're somebody else's dogs. But puppies? Puppies chew, puppies bite, puppies pee and poop on the floor, puppies can't walk on a leash, puppies whine and cry, AND they're a big expense! So, yes the persuading was on the part of the kids and man begging me the mama to please take on another charge.
Fine.
Puppy we got.

Now before you go, "He's so cute! He's so cute!" Take a look at this next picture.

Yep.
That's Archie.
"Our-chi"huahua.
 Get it? Archi-wawa?

Now as a little chihuahua mix the little guy is gonna need a sweater. Am I right?? I flipped open my old Stitch N Bitch book and started working on Dog-O-Matic.
This pup's so small that it was difficult to find another pattern that would work! A few hours later and I had my doggie sweater, turtleneck and all. I wish I'd gotten a picture but to sum it up it didn't fit at all.
I had to undo the turtle neck, rip out a few rows at the top and undo the seams for the front to re-position it. Then I had to snip a stitch at the bottom of the front and work downwards for an additional two inches before re-sewing the whole thing.
After the first re-do, it looked much like this:

All in all I thought it was OK. The length of the front was great, but I wasn't a big fan of the back length at the bottom. For one thing, I thought that was far too much ribbing. Secondly, I didn't like the way it jarred out in a squared off abrupt end. I wanted a kind of a curved edging. Also, I thought perhaps he needs some sleeves, at least to cover up his armpits a little better. So the sweater went off the dog and back on the needles.
I snipped a stitch down at the bottom and worked downward decreasing 6 stitches in one row: one at the beginning, one per reverse stockinette stitch panel and one at the end. A row or two later I decreased the 6 middle stitches down to 3, and then did a smaller rib section. It came out a little short, and looked like this:

The curve wasn't exactly the effect I was going for and I actually ended up shortening it way too much. But the ends were all weaved in and I figured he was going to grow out of it anyways and the 100% acrylic was getting on my nerves and I was starting to hate the project. So I picked up the "sleeve" stitches and worked a few rows in k1p1 for his little arms. In doing so I realized the sleeves would have been a lot better in crochet, and hey why don't I just do a little crochet edging along the bottom and the unfinished side?
So I did.

There's that curve I was looking for!
It's still a little short, but it was a fun project all together and I think with this prototype I can do a much better version, in perhaps sock weight yarn so it doesn't overwhelm him.
My model got sleepy and you know, I'm tired too.

Zzzzzzzzzz