About Us

Beginnings

I founded Happy Tails in the mountains of Northern California and came of age in the San Francisco scene in 1997. Built upon a commitment to using innovative design and revolutionary construction methods, Happy Tails became the leading, high quality, professional maker of floggers and whips world-wide by mid 1998. Lezlie had discovered her life's work. Perfect clicker-cut tails from every kind of hide, the first to import aand use kangaroo lace for handles, introducing a variety of classic and new handle patterns, with a unique style that suits every taste and preference. Immersed in a variety of fine arts and handcrafts since childhood, I draw on these multi-ethnic and mixed-media artistic traditions from around the world - skills honed by participation in national and international artisan groups and associations, competitions for excellence in other media - and 29 years of pioneer, small-farm life-skills, made Happy Tails possible. All of this goes through my hands into every single item I've made and designed. And here, I want to credit my late mother, Audrey Ceran, an incredible artist herself, without whom Happy Tails would not exist.

It all began when Lezlie decided she was going to learn how to plait (braid):

It takes a certain kind of temperament, incredible patience, and hundreds of hours of practice to be able to plait fancy handles and do the complex pineapple knots... Just one knot takes about 6 continuous feet of leather lace to weave, a three-pass pineapple knot up to 15 feet! Many plaiters develop extremely strong hand, finger, and forearm muscles from the long hours of daily gripping and pulling. Few can do it in their spare time, and even fewer can do it for a living. In 2019 I had surgery on my right hand because I had such scarred, inflamed finger tendons, I was in constant pain and had lost the use of my hand. That's what 24 years of braiding can do. Plaiting is also mentally demanding, so temperament and patience are cricital to success.

I've been asked many times "How long does it take you to do a knot?" The real answer lies in the innumerable hours I've put in, cussed, and physically/mentally *hurt* to get to the point of my perfection, not just how fast am I now. I'm 61 years old now, and can't work as fast as I did when I was 40, to be honest, and I have to balance work with other life responsibilities and pursuits. I'm a very creative person and all of my interests and hobbies involve creating beautiful things with my hands, eyes, senses, and mind. It took blood, sweat and tears, literally, to become a great braider. When I was learning and memorizing the mathematical algorithms, sometimes I'd lock myself in the bedroom and cry for an hour when I couldn't get part of it right. But afterwards, I'd gather myself up and get back at it again. There was no YouTube back then, I had no mentor or teacher to help me. I had 3 books, anmd that was it. You have to have that patience, the drive, and the willingness go through all of that to become the best. The learning curve has been vertical for as long as I can remember, and even now, it's still vertical when there's something new on the horizon I have to master.

Since then, I've worked my magic on over 30,000 floggers, taking great pride in excellent craftsmanship and workmanship. The rest is history.

• Next

The Phoenix has risen from the ashes:

In 2018 I returned to my beloved northeast Iowa, although a different region than before, almost as far northwest as you can go in the region, out on the windswept prairie. The prairie turned out to be the toughest environment, full of surprises, constantly testing humans who dare to live on it, and I swear it was trying to kill me, that first year. From record snowfall and blizzards, polar vortex, a tornado, wind storm, and flooding, I went through it all. But I have come to love this wide-open land, and the vistas are just as beautiful as others I've enjoyed. There are pheasants everywhere, wolves, deer, coyotes, and eagles, amidst the giant fields and CRP land. I used the move to reinvent myself and change my life, take advantage of new opportunities, and begin making Happy Tails into a very personal business.

I now live in a little 1881 house on the edge of a tiny town of -450 people, on a small urban homestead I've transformed into One World Micro Eco Farm, my second business, producing organic, indoor-grown gourmet oyster mushrooms, many homestead products like herbal soaps, sugar scrubs, fermented hot sauces, a line of gourmet stone-ground-by-hand mustards, smelling salts, exotic from scratch vinegars, dried flower prictures, handspun yarn, jams and jellies and canned goods, willow basketry, and fruits and berries on my third of an acre of precious, virgin, 3 foot deep, black Carrington loam soil. The best, humus-rich prairie soil you could ever imagine! The same dirt as the first settlers foumd under the thick grass sod, in 1865. Having a sustainable, income-producing, organic micro eco farm has been a lifelong dream of mine, and I have to beleive I was given this fabulous soil for a reason: Make the dream come true before you die. This is your chance to do it right, totally your way, using all your accumulated experience and knowledge. I vend at the big Decorah farmers market every week, May though October. The 2025 season at it will be my third season vending there.

In Sept 2020 my illness, FAP, had to be dealt with again, requiring another major abdominal surgery to prevent intestinal cancer, at Mayo Clinic. The (often painful) recovery process resulted in a couple of nasty new, chronic conditions making me miserable much of the time. That was over 4 years ago as I write this. The doctors weren't entirely honest about what recovey would be like, until I had a diagnostic endoscopic procedure 6 months later to find out why I had so much pain, after months of suffering and winter weather preventing travel. He was the one who informed me it would take an entire year, longer, in fact, for me to find the "new normal". Oh, great! That was both devastating news, and something of a challenge, and involved multitudes of lifestyle changes, some new medications, and holistic approaches to integrate everything, including Happy Tails, into what finally became my "new normal", trying to live a harmonious life, following my Nichiren Buddhist beliefs. It's a far cry from the "old normal" and I have an often tortured relationship with food, even foods I love to eat, which aren't the same things I loved to eat before.

I also did renovations to my house, doing a lot of the work myself. I had a succession of construction dumpsters that hauled away a total of 34 cubic yards of debris and crap. It's like, one day I was suddenly doing a lot better; I was having more good days than bad days, and my system had finally settled down. It's still evolving, in smaller ways here and there, but it worked out pretty good once my body adjusted to it's new internal configuration and I found the right path forward. Harmony and good karma have always been important to me, and for Happy Tails. I've even got the new One World Micro Eco Farm business going full steam ahead this year, selling my bountiful homestead offerings.

And in 2023 I had my contractor build a 7 foot high steel cat enclosure around the front and west side yards with big steel gates, for my pack of felines to safely go outside, and I had the old decrepit room in back of the kitchen demolished (trouble occured when we discovered a huge 12 foot deep brick and concrete cistern where we had to dig foundation trenches and pour footings) and built back larger, taller, up to Code, with a chilled cold room at one end for storing produce, and the bigger room with side door, has 3 walls of major industrial strength wood shelves for all my homestead operation materials, ingredients, supplies and a 4' l, 18"deep, 5' h, commercial stainless steel restaurant rack on which I store up to 800 lbs of canned and preserved foods and specialty shelf stable ingredients for lots of diverse ethnic and European cooking. I am an accomplished chef and baker, with a fully outfitted gourmet kitchen, and my renovations included making my own walnut countertops with organic surfaces, a tall commercial faucet, and huge imported German Hauser granite sink.

• Next