P e t z 'R U s

This website is built around the game "Petz," a dog and cat simulation game created in the 90's. While there are other petz games created today, mostly for handheld devices, this old PC game is at the center of a small online community. Petz 'R Us (PRU) is just one of many websites dedicate to this old game. While old, though, it has its own charm and is surprisingly fun when playing with a larger crowd of people on forums, etc. There are a surprising amount of combinations for bred petz. I personally have not seen them all, and I don't think anyone has. There are also numerous ways that people have been able to alter the original files that came with the game to create their own combinations. As someone who loves animals - especially dogs - this is a super fun game because it allows me, and others, to create their own dog breeds. Someone can already create their own selective breeds in reality, but it's fun to create virtual ones because.. for one, the process is much, much faster.. and for another, you can set the "dogs" aside and don't have to upkeep taking care of them. It's fun to just play around with what is possible, and be wowed by a new combination you have never seen before.

 

I started playing the petz games in about 5th grade, but did not find the "petz community" (the many forums and websites centered around the game) until about 7th grade. Since then, I have been breeding, learning how to "hex" new things, and roam the community because there are simply a TON of different things and styles of others that are super fun to look through. As silly as it may sound, petz and the creators of new content are their own little artists and I enjoy seeing what people do with this little virtual "art form."

 

PRU was originally founded as an "easy site builder" with freewebs.com on 08/30/2007. At that point, I didn't know anyone about web design, and how coding in HTML/CSS worked. I actually don't think that too many people use that anymore? At least, I think a lot of people use newer websites, even for larger businesses, that do not use the type of coding that I used? Though, this is probably a lot different for people who own their own domain. Anyway. Petz 'R Us got its first "real," completely original layout on 01/27/2008 with the help of two petz community members, Frances and Bubblewrap.

 

While they helped me to code and create the layout, it was a big step for me as a website owner and as someone trying to learn web design. Within all of the pages, I now needed to code all of my content and figure out how it was going to fit within this new design. It was a ton of fun to learn more - but it also gave me the urge to create my own layout.

 

About at year or so after using the layout that Frances and Bubblewrap created, I bugged Noelle @ Diversity (man, that was just the greatest petz site ever) to learn how to code my own layout. She helped me over e-mails for a few weeks and answered all of my silly questions, taking a look at what I had so far. I really appreciciated her support trying to sort through everything, as some things truly did take me some time to latch onto.

 

Now, in the summer of 2015, I have created this newer website. The look is a lot more modern that my older websites and layouts, but I really like it because it's somewhat fresh and "modern" in comparison. Now my website doesn't look as old as the game that I'm playing, I guess. It's also a lot easier to update that my previous website. While I enjoyed learning HTML and CSS coding, I really don't have the patience for it, and the desire to create new layouts now that I have jobs and college and whatnot. I'm really hoping that I can keep this place updated - even if I don't add a ton of content at once after all of my crew pages are put together.

 

My coding within the petz games - hexing - creating new content, etc might not be terribly relevent in the real world. But, it is still a lot of fun and is full of memories of other people I met online, creations that I have both "owned" and witnessed, etc. I'm glad to still be a part of the petz community, even if it is small and continuously decreasing in numbers with the addition of newer computers and it's old members ... well... getting older.

 

Thanks so much for vising Petz 'R Us and being a part of this small, but friendly and delightful little community.