Stuff

Today let’s talk about you humans and your obsession with canines – and STUFF.  If you own a dog, chances are you have all kinds of things that remind you of us, and our breed, around the house.  Our house has Labrador retriever mugs (dating back to Beamish – a yellow lab that Frodo and Paxton remember), all kinds of dog ornaments, dog placemats, hats with dogs on them, Bernese Mountain dog pillows, Bernese Mountain dog fridge magnets,  Bernese and PON jewelry, PON statues, PON car magnets and a HOST of pictures and paintings – and of course every breed book ever printed about us – some of which are in languages our human doesn’t even speak.

And there are numerous photos – in fact someone once mentioned that there are more dog photos than people photos in our house!

And then there are the custom paintings… I bet you don’t know that YOU may be wearing a sweatshirt with Frodo or Paxton on it!  This is a cool story….

We know my human likes to get STUFF with dogs on it and a number of years ago she found an artist who was starting to do dog portraits – and she was selling the original paintings on Ebay.  My human bought one of a Bernese.  When it arrived, she sent a thank you e-mail to the artist and she received a reply.  They e-mailed back and forth and my human mentioned that she had a PON (it was before my time!).   At that point, the artist had painted many Bernese – but only one PON.  She said to my human that if my human had any PON pictures that the artist could use as ideas for her artwork, she would appreciate receiving them.  So my human sent off a bunch of pictures of Frodo and just for fun, sent one picture of Paxton.  Well.  The next thing you know – my human looks on-line and THERE is Paxton’s picture - which is now a lovely painting – and it is being auctioned off on Ebay.  There was NO WAY my human was NOT going to win that auction.  And the bidding went crazy.  And my human went crazy.  Long story short – she won it – and the artist was so grateful for the large sale – that she did a portrait of Frodo when he was young.  Which ALSO went up for auction. (So much for grateful –I think she knew my human was crazy – so she figured let’s do this all over again).  You guessed it.  My human won that auction too.

Here are the photos and the portraits – which have now been turned into shirts and prints and mugs and probably underwear.  So YOU may be wearing one of my brothers! Or you may have them hanging on your wall.  But in case you are wondering – nope- we don’t get any royalties from the sale of the items.  BUT it IS fun to know that my brothers are famous.  Or infamous.  Depending on the day.  Just let me know if you would like their paw-tograph and I'll see if I can get one for you.

 

I started thinking about all this STUFF and how we dogs don’t do the same thing.  I mean wouldn’t it be funny if we wore collars with little pictures of humans on them?  And our drinking bowls had hand prints around them – since you humans have mugs with dog paw prints on them?  Hey – that might be my new money-making scheme.  Gotta go talk to my accountant…you humans will buy anything. 

©  2014  Linda Wozniak