It's not unusual for Ginger the teacup Maltese to go to sleep and wake up a different color. Most recently, green is her mom's hue of choice.
"The season is starting back up and we're big Celtics fans," Aubrey O'Day tells PEOPLE Pets. "So we have Ginger green right now, she likes basketball."
The performer, and former member of girl group Danity Kane, has been turning a lot of heads — and getting a bit of heat — for dyeing her dog's fur a variety of rainbow colors. "I have seen the polls and the negative comments about me doing it in blogs and stuff," she says. "But I don't know, she doesn't mind it. I do it when she's sleeping usually. Or when she's really tired and she kind of lays in my lap."
'I must have dyed like 16 dogs'Dyeing her dog's fur has become a serious hobby for O'Day, whose headlining gig for the Las Vegas revue Peep Show began on Sept. 21 at Planet Hollywood. It all started when she spotted a dog in Venice Beach, Calif., with dyed hair.
"I went to my vet when she was getting her check up and I asked her if there was such a dye out there, if there was something that you could really dye your dog with safely," she says. "She explained to me, 'Yeah, you can do it.' "
Using products recommended by her vet, she even started dyeing the fur of friend's dogs that lived near her Newport Beach, Calif., home. "I must have dyed like 16 dogs in the time that I was there," says O'Day, who is currently living out of a hotel in Las Vegas while she performs in Peep Show. "Women's dogs, young kids' dogs, every end of the spectrum. Black dogs that we just kind of made a little tint in their fur. Every kind of dog — it was so funny! I had like a little salon going on in my house."
Adapting to changeShe got so enthralled working with different products to achieve the best color, that she is developing her own line, which is scheduled to launch later this year or early next. She already has a line of dog apparel, featuring tutus, hair bows and doggie tees, on the Web site Heartonmysleeve.com.
O'Day says that Ginger's ever-changing hair color is a reflection of all the change that's happening in both their lives right now, like moving from California to Las Vegas. "We change so much, so I think that that we just kind of adapt to our change," she says. "I mean, she has different personalities everywhere we go."