Kate Dwyer, of Bella Tocca Tags, used to make jewelry for people. After her goldsmith's training in Europe, she went on to design, manufacture, and restore fine jewelry on both coasts for 25 years. For much of the last decade she did product development work and supervised production for Extasia Jewelry, a renowned fashion jewelry manufacturing company, headquartered in Nevada County, California. But people jewelry can get a little old after 25 years, and Kate wanted to play a new game.
Then one day, in a pinch for a 40th birthday present to a good friend with a new puppy, Kate made her first custom dog tag. Then came custom made tags for 6 dogs at Pioneer Park who got jealous of Hazel's new tag.
Then came 7 more tags for other jealous dogs at the park. Then 4 more... And one morning, having scanned all the dogs at Pioneer Park, proudly wearing their beautiful custom made sterling silver tags, Yuba (Kate's trusty 10 year old German Shepard, with impeccable Old World aesthetics, and uncanny business acumen) looked into Kate's eyes and said, "Let's play tags, Kate!" And there you have it. The new game of Bella Tocca Tags was born.
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