Thor's Woodshop is named in honor of an English Mastiff who ruled his kingdom from 2001-2011. Thor was a gentle giant with a kindness in his disposition that had to be experienced to be believed. There are enough tales of Thor's great adventures to fill a book, but one reason we named the Woodshop for him lies in one of his many peculiar, unexplainable habits....

Depending on your perspective, Thor either loved trees or hated them. On the very first day we brought him home as a puppy, one of the first things he did was attack a banana tree we had in the back yard. He just went to work on it. Chewed it, tore at it, barked at it, and dragged the shredded pieces around like it was a prized kill. The mighty tree hunter was born. In time, very few tree products escaped his drool filled jaws. He loved shredding our newspaper, and once even ate a book we had purchased about owning English Mastiffs. Whenever we would trim trees or bushes in the yard Thor would want nothing more than to join in. He would take one of the limbs out of the pile, drag it to a neutral corner an just gnaw on it. If you offered that dog a fresh cut tree limb or a piece of bacon, he'd probably take the tree limb half the time.

As my woodworking interests grew, he would just hang out in the garage and was perfectly happy chewing on an old 2x4 while I made whatever project I was butchering at the moment. Thor was 200 pounds of lovable goofiness and gave us a lifetime of crazy memories. We figured why not keep his name alive in some small way. And if we have half as much fun playing with old trees as he did, we'll be a-ok. ​