Category Archives: News

I want to live in Denmark – New-build apartment block in Denmark has communal dog washing facility in the gardens

Landlords having mostly failed to get the memo about dogs being man’s best friend, a Danish developer is building an apartment block exclusively for dog owners.

The three-story complex in Frederikssund, Zealand, about 45km from Copenhagen, should be finished within the next 12 months and its 18 rented flats will be reserved for tenants with dogs, the local Frederiksborg Amts Avis newspaper reported.

“There’s a real demand,” developer Niels Martin Viuff told the Ritzau news agency. “People are tired of the fact that there are so many places where you cannot have a dog. We’d like to welcome dog owners. Many of them feel a little lonely.”

Viuff, who consulted the Danish kennel club on the apartments’ design and canine-friendly features, said he and his partner Palle Søegaard hoped the Doghouse, as it will be known, would also foster a strong community spirit among residents because they will share a common passion.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Lise Lotte Christensen, a behavioural consultant at the club, the country’s largest association for dog owners, told the paper. “It’s super exciting, it’s innovative, and we look forward to following the project as it evolves.”

Christensen said the flats would feature hard-wearing, easy-to-clean floors. “Dogs wear things out. They have their winter outdoor footwear on all year round,” she said. “They don’t take their shoes off in the entrance.”

The complex will also have a communal dog-washing facility in the gardens, which would be designed to take account of the fact that dogs are not great respecters of plants, she added.

Viuff said he would want to meet prospective tenants and their dogs before signing the lease. Residents with more than one dog would be welcome as long as the dogs were small, but the very biggest breeds, weighing more than 45kg, would be refused because the apartments were not big enough.

Cat owners, too, would be discouraged, for obvious reasons. But if the Doghouse proved successful, a Cathouse might follow. “I could imagine we might build an apartment block for cat owners,” Viuff said. “It’s on the drawing board.”

What makes a dachshund the perfect muse?

The long history of sausage dogs in art

(To read the full article with pictures go to The Guardian.)

From Picasso to Warhol, dachshunds have been the constant companion of creative types. Sausage dog enthusiast David Capra explains why…

My muse is a seven-year-old chocolate and tan sausage dog. I was captivated by Teena when she was a pup: ears that moved like a tiny elephant’s, a seal-jolting head and platypus feet pitter-pattering along, trying to get hold of my laces. Before we met I made sculptures called Prayers for Sausage Dog; one such work was a three-headed dachshund contraption the tail of which I vigorously turned in hope it would summon such a creature. It seems to have worked: Teena was rescued from a puddle of mud under a house in Nyngan, in the Bogan shire of New South Wales.

Teena is named after a Tena Pad, a Swedish-based urinary incontinence product. She was christened with her name by virtue of her shape – she distinctly resembles one of those great inventions of absorbency. In addition, Teena often greets strangers with a rolling operation, landing on her back, presenting a memento of the happy occasion: a small tinkle.

n 2016, Teena launched her own fragrance, Eau de Wet Dogge, on Australian breakfast television with a smell-o-vision segment with Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson. In 2014, Teena’s Bathtime was launched at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Bella room, where audiences were invited to help bathe a large sculpture of Teena. Visitors grew so attached to the room-sized zigzagging Teena installation that some had to be consoled when she was packed away. Visitors related to Teena’s experiences around anxiety (Teena doesn’t enjoy bath time). Some wrote letters of advice to her, for example: “Get over it, it’s only a bath”, and “Baths will keep you smelling fresh. Maybe start with soaking your paws.”

Last year, I embarked on a global self-funded “saus tour”, documenting sausage dogs I encountered on footpaths. In New York, I met Katy Dobbs, who had been the longstanding editor-in-chief of Muppet Magazine. “I got a weiner dog of my own after falling in love with a close friend’s [dog],” she said. That friend had been Andy Warhol.

Warhol and his tan short-haired Archie were inseparable, Dobbs told me. It wouldn’t be uncommon for the artist to switch attention to Archie during interviews or make an appearance at Studio 54, paw in hand.

“Archie was a mirror of his boss,” says Jamie Wyeth, who made oil paintings of the pair. “He’d sit there and stare at people. And just like Andy, he didn’t say a word.”

In 1957, American photographer David Douglas Duncan and his pet dachshund, Lump, set off in his Mercedes Gullwing 300 SL to visit Pablo Picasso in the Villa La Californie, near Cannes. Used to living in a cramped Rome apartment, Lump liked Picasso’s endless rooms and Esmeralda, the artist’s pet goat, so much that he decided to stay. The Marriage of Lolita and Lump chapter in Duncan’s book, Lump: The Dog Who Ate a Picasso, shows Lump’s first meeting with a lady dachshund. Picasso can be seen helping the two consummate their marriage. (On a related note, a friend of mine used to be employed to assist dachshunds to mate. “Their bodies don’t quite meet up, you see,” my friend told me, “so they needed an extra pair of hands.”)

Soon after Lump’s arrival, Picasso commemorated their first lunch together by inscribing in ink the dog’s outstretched silhouette on a porcelain plate. A photograph shows the moment immediately afterwards, with Picasso’s fishbone spread across his mouth and Lump’s yearning eyes looking on.

Lump was a constant companion of Picasso, the two dying only days apart. Duncan says of their bond: “When Picasso looked at Lump a sweet gentleness glowed in his eyes. Once he said, ‘Lump has the best and worst in us!’.”

American painter William N Copley is another notable artist seduced by the dachshund. His four-legged friend would pop up in painted scenes alongside car accidents, meat grinders, nude women and patterned interiors. French avant garde artist Pierre Bonnard tenderly rendered his dachshund with a few scarce brush marks, seated in rooms of yellow and magenta, or on someone’s lap at dinner.

Ruthie, the pup of German expressionist Franz Marc, is depicted in Dog Lying in the Snow, voted the Städel Museum’s most popular painting in 2008. We can’t be sure if the dog depicted is of the dachshund breed, but it does bear those familiar triangular ears and elongated log body. According to Marc, animals are the only innocent and pure creatures left in this corrupted world. Though, if he truly believed that, it is unlikely he ever encountered the headstrong and mischievous dachshund.

In Alba, northern Italy, I came face to face with futurist Giacomo Balla’s Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash. This masterpiece presents a dachshund with multiple paws a’ flapping looking somewhat between a well-oiled machine and progress itself, as it purposefully walks down the street. Only hours earlier on the flight over, I watched how Jim Carrey’s character on The Truman Show learns his entire life is a 24-hour-a-day TV program. During the realisation sequence, a dachshund is seen raging the road, its leash tumbling in the wind and sausage body zipping across the frame.

Another pit stop on the saus tour was meeting New York dog artist William Wegman, known for his collaborations with weimaraners, like Fay Ray, the “supermodel dog” who counted balls on Sesame Street. Wegman now works with Flo and Topper, the half-brother and sister duo. Fresh from their photo shoot with Vogue, I presented them with Eau de Wet Dogge, a gift from Teena. The kitchen became a beastly whirlwind mass of grey as the two circled the scent. Flo and Topper then demonstrated how they balanced on their famed white plinths. I saw the same level of bodily pose and focus that sweeps across Teena’s face when the camera makes an appearance. Some dogs, more than others, are made for show business, yet all the dachshunds I know go about life like they are continually in the spotlight.

Next on the saus tour list is the brand new Dackelmuseum in Passau, Germany. Of particular interest is what appears to be a stuffed half dachshund, half Komodo dragon on display.

Australian artist Bennett Miller is no stranger to the sausage dog form, staging the work Dachshund UN across the globe. Here, delegates were replaced by real dachshunds in a to-scale tiered model of the United Nations commission on human rights assembly.

“I was looking at this idea of form following function and the dachshund form is sort of strange because it’s very divorced from its function,” Miller said in 2012. “The dachshund [is] a good metaphor for the UN, mostly because of the restricted form [of] their tiny legs …[looking] proud and determined.” For one hour, little dogs barked into microphones seated behind country name placards. Pure joy and mania.

British painter David Hockney, known for his fashionable ensembles of stripes, bow ties and smart trousers, was often seen with dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie. The two would regularly be found in Hockney’s studio, sitting on their cushions, snuggling up to each other as they watched each brushstroke. They complement the picture, not unlike the handsome Daki the dachshund in Jacques Tati’s 1958 slapstick comedy, Mon Oncle. Dressed in tartan print, the family pet appears to be of the same make as the modernist furnishings populating the sets.

Stanley and Boogie have had an entire picture book, Dog Days, dedicated to their laying about. “I notice the warm shapes they make together, their sadness and their delights,” Hockney writes. “And being Hollywood dogs, they somehow know that a picture is being made.” The Hollywood Hills is a far cry from barking at badgers in the countryside, which is what the dachshund was originally bred for.

What makes a dachshund so adored by artists? Maybe it’s because a sausage dog is the only match for an artist’s ego. The dachshund sure is an authority when it comes to singlemindedness. They see the world for what it is: theirs and for the taking. Teena demonstrated this recently when, before presenting to a TEDx audience of 5000, she developed a reputation backstage for all her barking – so much that a sign was hung on her dressing room: “Please knock with only two gentle knocks. Enter with caution.”

Can I share my ice-cream with my dog?

After a video of a woman feeding a cone to her pet went viral, other dog-owners were quick to point out that they share saliva with their dogs, too. But it isn’t always safe.

Read the article on the Guardian.

Dog photographer of the year 2018

The Kennel Club has announced the winners of its Dog Photographer of the Year competition. Monica van der Maden was the overall winner with an image of Noa the Great Dane seemingly alone in a forest…

Click here for the Dog Photographer of the Year 2018

Watching Isle of Dogs with a cinema full of canines

Scruffy, a sociable yellow labrador, enjoys lying on the couch watching westerns (because of the horses) and Match of the Day (because of the ball), but is only now, at the age of 10, making his debut trip to the cinema. The reason? To attend a pooch-friendly preview of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs at the Cameo in Edinburgh.

“I’m hoping that he will behave,” says Scruffy’s human, Rory, adding, as if in reassurance: “He’s well house-trained.”

This sold-out screening is a first in the city (Picturehouse had a run of dog-friendly showings around the UK on Sunday). The cinema has laid on water bowls and blankets. There is not much of a queue for popcorn; when the picture begins, biscuits and dried pig ears will be brought out from bags.

In the foyer, gazing up at the chandelier, is Gordon “Kanye” Westie, a west highland terrier, shortbread-tin cute in a tartan bow tie. He is here with Fiona, a teacher, who uses the Dugs app on her phone to identify which pubs and other businesses are dog-friendly. She has been lobbying the Cameo to hold these screenings. “When Gordon was a puppy I was basically housebound,” she recalls. “It was like having a newborn baby, and I was missing loads of films.”

 

Within the auditorium are dogs of every sort. The largest, a newfoundland called Luna, seated front and centre, is the approximate size of the MGM lion. The smallest, a terrier cross called Pedro, has enjoyed a Hollywood ending of his own. The heart-shaped white mark on his forehead is apt; Wendy and Rhona, an Edinburgh couple, discovered him as a starving stray while visiting the ruins of the Temple of Aphrodite in Cyprus, and brought him back to live with them in Scotland where he enjoys climbing mountains and, now, attending the cinema.

The lights go down. The ears perk up. Isle of Dogs is a gorgeous stop-motion animation with a cast of impeccable pedigree: Bryan Cranston is a blue-eyed mongrel; Tilda Swinton a visionary pug. Whenever an animal howls or growls on screen, which is often, there is an answering bark from the audience. Mostly, the dogs behave. Some seem bored. The phlegmy pant of a French bulldog soon becomes a phlegmy snore.

As the film ends there is barking and applause. Wagged tails bang the backs of seats. Satisfied customers include Tobermory, an eight-year-old lab, named for the whisky not the Womble. I had wondered, while perusing Tobermory’s Facebook page – like a sort of Canine Analytica – whether this really was his first trip to the cinema. Records show that he went to see Murder on the Orient Express on 5 November last year, and considered it to be “mince”. This, however, turns out to be the opinion of Bob, a barman and waiter who updates the page and whom the dog has brought along for company.

“I thought this film was fantastic,” says Bob. And Tobermory? “He had a bit of a sleep.”

For the full article with images go to The Guardian.

Voting time again

While Couscous stayed home in comfort other dogs around the country went to the polls:

Dogs at polling stations

Dogs and voting

A timely piece showing various dogs at polling stations – click here.

Cross-post from the BBC.

Japan’s largest pet fair

Photo Franck Robichon/EPA

Nearly 30,000 visitors and more than 10,000 pets are expected to attend the Interpets Asia Pacific fair in Tokyo, where the photo opportunities are endless.

Click here for the pictures

 

Art for dogs

World’s First Art Exhibition for Dogs

British inventor, artist and satirist Dominic Wilcox  is at it again, this time with a contemporary art exhibition aimed at canine attendees with a range of interactive installations purpose-built for pups.

Play More in London has an array of dog-oriented artworks set low on the gallery walls as well as other more directly experiential displays.

dog-bowl-side-644x441

For the full article from WebUrbanist click here.

I own the world’s ugliest dog

When my colleague at the animal shelter called me to meet a dog that had just been brought in, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. It was about 10 years ago, and a man had come in saying he’d found three dogs and couldn’t keep them. I wondered if I was on Candid Camera: I’d worked at the shelter as a vet for 20 years, and had seen thousands of animals, but never anything like this.

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As he walked them towards the shelter, someone said, “He’s meant to be bringing three dogs, but that one’s a pig or something.” Quasi Modo, as I later named her, was around a year old and had a birth defect called short spine syndrome: everything fused together in her back and she couldn’t move her head. She still has to turn her whole body to look at anything.

For the full story go to the Guardian.