Lake mud, and the pocket it hides in.

The south end of Cayuga does not give you a clean mud. After rain, the path by the inlet holds a gray clay that shines when it is wet and turns to a pale film when it dries. Dogs that like the edge bring it home in the cleft of each pad and in the last inches of the lead, the part that drags when they stop.

From the shop you walk west through the Commons and down toward the inlet. You can be in that clay before the errand is finished. People look at the leather the next morning and think it is fine. The outside is dry. The fold just behind the snap is not.

Leather

That fold is a pocket. Clay packs it. The pocket stays closed against a sleeve or a door handle, and the thread sits damp for the rest of the day. Cotton thread gives up first. The leather can still look honest while the stitch has started to pull.

Nylon does not rot the same way, which is why a wet nylon lead gets trusted. It also holds the smell of the inlet in the fibers, and it stays cold in the hand in April. We still sell leather. The leads on the rail are saddle-stitched in waxed polyester, with a brass rivet at the stress point. None of that helps if the fold stays shut and wet until the next day.

• Open the fold. Unclip the snap from anything it is looped through.
• Rinse the clay off with lukewarm water. Wipe it.
• Hang the lead open, where air moves, not on a radiator.
• Saddle soap only if the hide is actually dirty, after the rinse. Soap on clay, before water, grinds it in.

A radiator in a lot of Ithaca apartments will cook the spot that touches the pipe and leave the rest damp. The same rule is on the leather leads page, with the widths and the price.

Wool

Knock dried clay off the cover outside. Do not attack it wet. Wet clay smears into the ticking and then into the batting. Wool can take damp air and a mist. It cannot take a hose. If the cover is smeared, untie the tapes, spot-clean the cloth, and let the batting air. Do not wash the batting.

The bed sizes are on the wool beds page. Summer storage is there too: batting out, kept dry, not sealed in a bin on a cellar floor.

Paws

Check the cleft between the pads before the dog gets on the bed or the stair. Pick the clay out. A rinse is better than a dry wipe, which pushes grit further in. This is supply-level advice. A pad that is split, a nail that is torn back, or a dog that will not stand on one foot is a veterinarian. We will not look at it and tell you it is fine.

Salt season is a different mess, from December through March, and the tub for it is inside our door. That note is salt along East State. The walk that packs this clay in is clay on the waterfront lead.

When to bring the lead in

Bring it if the stitch has opened, if the snap spring is soft, or if the brass has a crack at the hinge. We would rather resew a fold we sold than sell you a new lead because a pocket of clay sat overnight. If the hide is chewed through, that is not a stitch problem.