The Wanaka-domiciled Rhodesian ridgebacks would not be seen dead dressed as a leprechaun, fairy or in an Oscar-inspired red carpet rip-off gown, and unless there is food around, their no-nonsense attitude extends to refusing to co-operate for the camera.
Modelling is something of a new career for the half-brother and half-sister, but they have taken it in their stride since owners Angela and Mark Hook decided to start a dog accessory business a year ago.
The launch of d-fa has turned Jack and Annie and a handful of other Wanaka dogs into poster pooches for adventure dogs, as they model made-in-New Zealand outdoor exercise jackets and harnesses in a variety of wilderness locations.
Their d-fa buddies include Albert Town gun dog and family Labrador Zoe (3), doberman Badge (3), which works in reception at the Falling Leaves B&B, and Labrador Blizzid (8), an alpine search dog at Treble Cone skifield.
Jack and Annie are well suited to the outdoor lifestyle - ridgebacks were bred in South Africa as a hunting dog to track lions - but Jack now favours being "director of homeland security" and lazing about.
The 8-year-old ridgeback is of unusually large size (54kg). He has arthritis in his toes and suffers back pain, a condition common in many large dogs.
Annie, the boisterous and not so little half-sister - they share a father - was raised in Dunedin and worked at the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind as a "distractor" dog, helping socialise guide dog puppies, before being rehoused with the Hooks when her former owner moved to Australia.
"She wormed her way into our hearts. She looks like something off a chocolate box and she's really cuddly but . . . she's a thug [where Jack's concerned]," Mrs Hook said.
Arthritic Jack struggled with Wanaka's cold winters soon after moving to the resort four years ago and that inspired the couple to commission Mr Hook's designer sister, Claire Ritchie, to make him a merino jacket.
The idea proved a marketable winner, one thing lead to another, and this month the Hooks and Ms Ritchie will be travelling to the United States to exhibit their small range of adventure dog clothing at two major pet industry shows.
While the d-fa range is small, more ideas are steadily coming through the research and design phases, with prototypes for a range of collars, harnesses and doggy packs still being tested on d-fa's eight canine models.
Among the additional accessories to be launched over the next 12 months is one that emerged when Annie displayed an aversion to swimming.
Next summer, she should be able to wear a flotation device while trying to keep up with Jack in the water.
It may seem bizarre that Wanaka, where dogs have traditionally been part of the workforce rather than flatmates, is now home to a dog clothing exporter.
But Internet and cellphone technology, plus an airport and a daily passenger airline service, means the Hooks can do without a shopfront and create and export from the comfort of their home.
New Zealand pet industry market figures were hard to come by, Mrs Hook said, because "without a overall governing body, they are not measured closely".
In New Zealand, there are about 600,000 registered dogs (about 39,000 in Otago, where a large percentage were working dogs).
The wide range of pet shops, vets, supermarkets and hardware stores which sold some kind of petware meant statistics were hard to track, but Mrs Hook estimated the value of the New Zealand "dog basics" market (for example, food, vet bills, shelter) was about $10 million.
New Zealanders can also buy extras such as insurance, glow-in-the-dark collars, lamps, nappies, sunglasses, bathrobes and backpacks for their dogs.
Elsewhere, the pet industry was also booming. In fast-growing China, for example, Beijing had at least one million registered dogs, and owners imported pet food from France, provided temperature-controlled beds and took their dogs to beauty salons.
In Poland, where most pets were still fed scraps from the table, the pet market was also booming, with a sharp 6.1% increase in pet-related gross domestic products in the first quarter of 2008.
However, the Hooks were targeting the United States, where the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association claimed some 75 million dogs lived in 45 million homes.
Mrs Hook, who also runs a market research company, said the total US pet market was estimated at $46 billion and should grow to $50 billion by 2010.
The market is populated by a wide range of people with disposable income; couples with no children looking for a surrogate child, the empty-nesters, the hunting crowds and the agility clubs.
It is those people the Hooks hope to target when they put up their simple trestle table and banners up at trade shows that Mrs Hook imagines will be like the film Best in Show - on steroids.
The first event is at the end of this month in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the second is in Orlando, Florida, in February.
But what about the uncertain economic times and the drop in discretionary spending?
"Word is also that because people tend to be passionate about their pets, then they are more likely to spend, even when times don't permit much discretionary spending," Mrs Hook said.
"People tend to continue to spend on things that are important to them or they are passionate about," Mrs Hook said. And she firmly believes a recession is not the time to bury one's head in the sand and stop marketing.
Mrs Hook (37) was raised in Dunedin, where she attended Otago Girls High School before obtaining a bachelor of arts degree and a masters of commerce in marketing from the University of Otago.
She then "followed her hormones" to Auckland and worked for four years in an agency doing brand research for clients including Frucor, TVNZ and the New Zealand Rugby Football Union.
When the relationship she was involved in ended, she returned to Dunedin to undertake consumer research for businessman Alan McConnon at Mainland Products Ltd.
She described Mr McConnon as a valued mentor who she still kept in touch with "whenever I feel I must be as mad as a snake".
Marketing is her passion and Mrs Hook cannot help coining phrases.
She was a big fan of the "Save Britney" campaign (she wears a bright pink Save Britney T-shirt and says it worked because Britney Spears had now got her life back on track) and rattles off sentences like "practise safe sushi - use condiments", "in dog we trust", "we believe in the almighty dog".
"There is no reason to be boring," she says.
Mark Hook (43) was raised in Gore and worked for banks and the Public Trust in Dunedin before moving to Wanaka to manage the BP service station for 18 months.
They met at a Wanaka party on the Millennium New Year's Eve and married 18 months later in Las Vegas. They did not really mean to move to Wanaka but found it a simple decision when Mr Hook was offered the BP job.
But he now works full-time as "director of operations and stuff" for d-fa and the couple's other businesses, Uber Research, Hook Line and Skier and part-owners of Yohei Sushi Cafe.
"We got into it during a period of insomnia when I was lying awake wondering what to do for the next 15 years.
"When I said to Mark, `I've been thinking,' he said, 'Oh no.' I think we launched the three businesses within three months," Mrs Hook said.
It was a satisfying move after working on other people's brands for a long time and not being able to earn the fruits of her own labours.
"All this did come through a period of self-doubt. Maybe it was a mid-life crisis. I don't know. But I had a dog with arthritis, a head full of ideas and a sister-in-law who is a designer - and nowhere to buy sushi in Wanaka."
Some NZ dog facts
-NZ has at least 600,000 dogs, with 27% of owners having more than one
-Otago has 39,000 registered dogs16.4% of NZ households have a dog
-There are more than 200 breeds recognised by the New Zealand Kennel Club, with the most popular breeds in NZ include Labrador, German shepherd and Border collies
-75% of owners talk to their pets as if they are children
-16% of NZ owners carry photos of their pets in their wallets (24% carry photos of their spouses or children)
-Otago SPCA estimates it costs about $1800 a year on basic dog care items, with $3-$4 a day on food, or more for a bigger dog.
