I’ve always loved dogs as well as music for as long as I can remember.  As a toddler my mam had to keep a tight hold of me when there were dogs about as I would run up to them, fling my arms around their necks and kiss them on the face.  I’d even sneak food out of the house and feed it to dogs in the street who I thought may be hungry.  No wonder I was popular with the local strays!

As I grew up my love of dogs seemed to increase, and I learned a respect for them. Kiro was a huge beautiful German Shepherd dog.  He was 3 years old when I first had contact with him back in 1994 while living in the south of Norway. He was being looked after by one drug addict for another, neither of them were doing a very good job and Kiro was extremely stressed and nervous as a result. With help from the Norwegian animal protection organisation I managed to persuade the owner to sign him over to me.

I was working offshore one week out of every 3, so my intention was to re home him with someone who would look after him properly. Unfortunately, this became an almost impossible task as he was now very nervous of men because of being beaten; being tormented by children as a pup didn’t help either. He also had a chip on his shoulder about other dogs, again probably due to the environment he’d grown up in, and had an obsession for chasing cats! The idea of dog behaviour modification in Norway at that time was relatively unknown and so no-one would take him on; so I was left with a decision; I could either put him in kennels while I was away each trip or have him put to sleep.

I’d been working with him and his problems and he’d come such a long way in a short time and was also such an amazing dog that the latter was out of the question, so I found a good kennel where he could stay each time I was at work and he was with me constantly when I was on leave.

The next problem was that I wanted to move back to the UK but the British quarantine laws meant that if I were to take him with me I’d have to put him in quarantine for 6 months. I just couldn’t do that to him.  So I spent the next 6 years campaigning for the quarantine laws to be changed. I sent our story to both Tony Blair, who was Prime Minister at the time, and Jack Cunningham the Minister For Agriculture and anyone else who would listen. Finally, in February 2001 the quarantine laws were changed and I was free to bring Kiro back to the UK, albeit by car via France through the Channel Tunnel and while going through a lot of red tape; by this time Kiro was 9 years old and suffering from arthritis.

The first 9 months were spent living on site of an animal re homing centre in Thirsk where I was Deputy Manager. During this time I could see that Kiro was not as lively as he had been but I discovered that he suddenly seemed like he had a spring in his step again every time I came home, even though he still had problems with his arthritis. It seemed like he preferred our offshore lifestyle where he had my full attention 24/7 during my leave.

We’d been companions for so long and gone through so much together that I would do whatever I could to make his life as comfortable as possible in his later years. While I was offshore he stayed at an amazing Pet Hotel called Triple A where he had an air conditioned, double glazed chalet with a TV and video and lots of attention from the staff. They were fantastic with him, particularly Derek who was a huge German shepherd lover. Derek would even take him for his weekly hydrotherapy and acupuncture sessions during his stays at Triple A to help his arthritis. He was so loved that he appeared in the first promotional video that the centre ever made.  Everyone who met him loved him, even those who were afraid of dogs lost their fear with this gentle giant.

On 6th October 2003, at 12 years old Kiro’s health finally gave up on him and he collapsed at home. After being rushed to the vet it was discovered that he had a tumour on his spleen.  It broke my heart, but there was only one decision to make. I lay on the floor of the surgery stroking his head cradled in my arms as the vet injected the huge dose of anaesthetic. I said goodbye for the final time as he quietly slipped away.

The bond that Kiro and I had is impossible to explain, especially to anyone who hadn’t experienced that dog/owner relationship. All I can say is that he touched my life in a way that no human could with his unconditional love. He may be gone, but he still remains and always will remain in my heart.

Kiro was a special dog, and I’m glad that I was there for him. But there are so many other dogs out there that so urgently need help. Dogs Trust is the biggest dog charity in the UK. I have worked for them as a Microchip Officer during my leave time a few years ago and I have been a huge supporter of their work for many years. They rely solely on donations from members of the public to fund the work they do.

This is why I have decided to combine my two loves, music and dogs, so that one can benefit the other. I’ve designed a guitar that I have named after my beloved Kiro. For each of those guitars that I sell I will donate a percentage of the profit to Dogs Trust. So when you buy a Kiro guitar you are not only buying a great quality instrument for a very reasonable price, but also helping dogs like Kiro to have another chance in life with a loving family, a life that all dogs deserve.

The 1st step with any guitar is to clarify its purpose. This was easy with the Kiro guitar as I wanted a smaller guitar that would appeal to a wider audience to help benefits the Dogs Trust, I like to scribble the ideas down so I don’t lose them; from all these ideas we then take the best of them and apply them to my guitar design.

In addition to the Kiro model, I have also designed a professional series of guitars that represent what I want to achieve as a luthier. My guitars are small bodied, expressive but powerful; specially designed for smaller hands....dare I say it ....I think I designed this guitar for women or musicians who didn’t want a huge dreadnought!

The next job is to distil all the ideas into a working model of the guitar, this allows us to see how it will all go together as a complete design and also to see if we need to alter any elements that are not quite as we expected. This step usually involves making a 2D drawing of the guitar and its components.

Depending on what we want to achieve we may make a 3D model to see how a rendered surface will look compared to a flat 2D image. This is where Marc does his ‘stuff’ and puts the computers to work.

Once all the design stages have been thoroughly explored we then progress onto making a prototype .... And this is where the real guitar starts to come to life.
As we take pics on the way through the various stages we’ll put on this page so you can see the process all the way through to the finished guitar.

One of the 1st items to go from the computer to reality are the new logos. We wanted to use alternative materials to enhance the look of the guitar. We chose to design and make super thin metal foil logos.

I designed the SS logos and Marc completed the designs using a CAD program. This ensures we had full copyright over the design.