Oh, I just spent this afternoon doing this for Amos (I tried it several years ago for a show, but messed it up).
I had Amos for fifteen years; I think he was at least two when I got him…..and he went everywhere with me back in those old days. And, yes…he was a small, yorkshire terrier…..given to me by my former sister-in-law, Laura Terry (since those married-days, a friend…which is good). Amos wasn’t very “cute” though……he was one of the rowstiest little dogs I’ve ever known. He wasn’t at all a silly lapdog. I photographed him all the time. He was always amusing.
That dog spent nights in Montreal hotels, a couple of Virginia farms, Vermont dorm-rooms (also ten years in a dorm room every summer at the Hill School in Pennsylvania), a couple of New Orleans hotels, the houses of various friends over the upper south ( I slept around a LOT in those days, for various reasons, and so did plucky Amos)……and God knows where else I went in my late twenties and early thirties. He went everywhere I went.
My sweetest memory of my father (who’s still quite present-tense, and I talk to him every day) was when, the day after one Christmas, I had to have Amos put to sleep while visiting back home. The vet did his business, while Amos slept in my lap….and they stuck him in a plastic bag…and my father drove me back to the house where I grew up, with that bag in my lap…..and, while driving, he said “Go ahead and cry…it’s alright”.
I remember sitting there, on the passenger side of the car, suddenly bawling and saying “Fuckit…I don’t ask anyone for much in this life…but I don’t want my damn dog to DIE“.
I don’t recall what my father said in reply, but he was very kind,as I recall, and he got me a shovel to bury Amos in the backyard where I grew up. I’ve still, ten years and three more dogs (they’re all quite alive) later, got his (Amos’s, not my father’s) collar and tag on my desk as I type this.
Oil pencil and pastel pencil
10″x12″
2013