Portrait of a Happy Lab - Garth's Mom Visits Spirited Art

By Guest Blogger Rebecca (AKA Garth's Mom)

On Friday night, a friend and I went to Spirited Art for their Pet Portrait Class.  At Spirited Art, you don't need any knowledge of technique or talent at painting.  For $50 and a few hours of your time, you can have a couple glasses of wine (the wine is optional), spend a few hours painting, and walk out of the studio with a painting of your pet.  I think that's a pretty good deal.

Although I call myself an "artist" in my guest blogger bios, I'm using that term pretty loosely.  I love to work with things like polymer clay, beads, wire, resin and chain maille, and I have a knack for kirigami, but I've always had difficulty drawing and painting anything to look realistic.  Luckily I (and everyone else in my class) had help from the folks at Spirited Art.

For the Pet Portrait Class, we each sent them a photo a week before class.  I sent one of my favorite photos of Garth -- one you will likely recognize:

Before the class started, the instructors sketched our photos onto a canvas.  

This is how the painting starts -- your photo sketched on a canvas.

They set us up with paints and an easel, and a waitress from The Wine Loft next door took our wine order. 

Yep, definitely gonna' need that glass of wine.

The instructor guided us through the process of mixing colors, painting the background, then painting our pets' features.  I expected it to be like the "Paint By Number" kits we had as kids, but it was much more difficult.  We had to mix our paints to get the right color, and I found that part to be the most difficult and frustrating.  With the variation in color in Garth's fur and the shadows in the creases on his face, it nearly drove me batty trying to figure out how to match the colors.  But the instructors were available for questions and they gave me advice on colors to use and how to mix them.

At this point in the evening, I was seriously
questioning the instructor's advice about using grey.

Needing a break from mixing colors,
I decided to paint the black areas.

The instructor gave us some pointers on painting eyes, and somehow the eyes ended up looking like Garth's eyes.

I know at this point you're wondering if I'd had too much wine.

I don't know if it's because it was Friday evening after a stressful, frustrating week, and I was tired and grumpy anyway, or if it's because I expected the class to be dummy proof, with the correct colors of paint already mixed and ready, along with clear instruction on where to paint which color, but I found the class to be enormously frustrating -- despite a couple glasses of wine.  (For this class, I needed tequila.)  My friend who had taken the class before said it was really stressful when she took the class and painted her dog, so she decided to paint a whimsical pelican instead this time, and she said she enjoyed the class much more.

At the point in class when I was seriously thinking that I'd toss the painting in the trash as soon as I got home, the instructor came and helped me out.  She fixed a couple things and suggested ways I could fix others, and miraculously the painting began to actually look like Garth -- and not a Garth who had been rolling his face in grey and black paint.

After some help and advice from the teacher,
it actually looked good!

I was pleased with the finished product.  I sent a photo to Garth's dad and he texted back "I LOVE it".

A side-by-side comparison of the painting and photo

A side-by-side comparison of the painting and Garth
(his ball looks awfully clean in the painting)

Garth no longer interested in the painting

Hanging on a wall in our living room

My recommendation:  I like Spirited Art.  Most of us don't have many outlets for our creativity in our everyday lives, so I love that they're providing such an outlet in a very non-intimidating environment - and with wine available.  But I would recommend starting out taking an easier class before trying the Pet Portrait Class.  In many of their classes, everyone paints the same thing, and it's often a colorful stylized version of whatever they're painting.  I think that would be much more fun and less stressful than trying to paint your pet from a photo image.  

When you're painting your pet, you're trying hard to make it actually look like your pet, so it's frustrating when it doesn't.  And for the first 90% of the class, it may not look much like your pet.  So if you do the Pet Portrait Class, be prepared for some initial frustration.  But the instructors are very good at fixing things and helping you make your painting the way you want it.  They had a couple blow-dryers in the back of the class, so we could dry the paint and paint over mistakes -- and the blow-dryers got a lot of use.  Halfway through the class, some of the dogs appeared to have toupees while one looked like a lemur, but we were all amazed and pleased with the final results.  I was ready to tear my hair out in the middle of the class, but now I look at the painting hanging in our living room, and I'm ready to take the class again.  After all, now I need a painting of Jake.

Book Review: Pukka’s Promise by Ted Kerasote

Book Review:  Pukka’s Promise by Ted Kerasote

by Rebecca Randolph, guest blogger (and Garth’s mom)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the publisher of Pukka’s Promise, provided me with a free copy of this book, however the opinions expressed in this review are my own.  I received no other compensation for this review.

Pukka’s Promise has been a very difficult book for me to review.  I read it back in February and have been mulling it over for months.  It left me questioning much of what I thought was true about how best to care for my dog.  It’s definitely not the kind of light summer reading you take to the beach.  It’s the kind of book you need to read and think about - but if you have dogs in your life, you definitely need to read it.  

Ted Kerasote is my idol.  He lives a life I would love to live (minus the elk-hunting and gutting) and provides his dogs with a life I would love to be able to provide my dogs.  His book Merle’s Door inspired me to give my dog Garth a better and more enriched life than I had provided my previous dog Jake.  I’ve read Merle’s Door three times, and I think it’s one of the greatest books ever written about a dog.  So when I began Pukka’s Promise, I was expecting another Merle’s Door.  But Pukka’s Promise is something else entirely.

In Pukka’s Promise, Ted Kerasote attempts to answer the question “how can our dogs live longer?”  This is one of those questions that I would have thought unanswerable, but it’s not.  I was shocked to learn that commonly-advocated practices may be detrimental to our dogs’ health and may actually be affecting their longevity.  Too-frequent vaccinations, spaying and neutering (especially at a very young age), feeding poor quality dog-food, and exposure to environmental toxins may all be factors in shortening our dogs’ lives.  Fortunately we have control over many of these factors.  Such factors include:

Vaccinations

How could something I’m doing for my dog’s health such as yearly vaccinations be harmful?  Vaccinations save lives, right?  Well, they do, but Kerasote’s research suggests that we may be over-vaccinating dogs, vaccinating every year when it might not be necessary, vaccinating for the same diseases everywhere - even in climates where those diseases don’t exist.     

Spaying and Neutering

Have we been pursuing the goal of preventing unwanted litters at the risk of our dogs’ health?  Are intact dogs healthier because they retain their body’s ability to produce beneficial hormones?    Do the health benefits of retaining beneficial hormones outweigh the health benefits of spaying and neutering?  Are there birth control alternatives for dogs that are healthier than spaying and neutering?  Absolutely we need to prevent unwanted litters, but why aren’t less invasive, less expensive, and less time-consuming procedures (vasectomies, hysterectomies, and tubal ligations) used?  Such procedures would allow dogs to retain their testicles and ovaries so these organs would continue to produce hormones beneficial to a dog’s health.

I’ve always been an advocate of spay/neuter programs, and am extremely resistant to any suggestion that spay/neuter should not be zealously promoted.  But what if it negatively affects the health of our dogs?  What if there are better options for preventing unwanted pregnancy in dogs?  

Dog Food

Kerasote also discusses the way we feed our dogs.  He provides the history of kibble production and describes his tours of rendering plants.  He discusses feeding a raw diet and other options and ends up choosing for Pukka a combination of wild game, commercially prepared raw food, and vegetables.  After reading Pukka’s Promise, I’ve been looking at dog food ingredients much more closely and experimenting with alternatives to kibble (much to Garth’s delight).  I’ve been reading more and more about different dog diets - from raw, to dehydrated, to freeze-dried, to home-cooked meals - and have realized that dogs, like humans, can benefit by eating whole foods instead of processed kibble.    

In addition to dealing with these heavy topics, Kerasote writes about his search for Pukka, Pukka’s puppyhood, and teaching Pukka about the world and the things he needs to know as a dog in Kelly, Wyoming.  I enjoyed these sections of the book immensely.  Kerasote is extremely observant and sensitive to Pukka’s feelings.  When Pukka gets a new crate and bedding that belonged to another dog, and for the first time cries in the crate, Kerasote realizes that there’s something about that crate that Pukka doesn’t like.  After Kerasote thoroughly scrubs the crate and cleans the bedding, Pukka is very comfortable there. 

At times it seemed like I was reading two different books -- one a story of Pukka’s early years, the other a book about the factors affecting dogs’ longevity.  I’m not saying this format didn’t work, it just didn’t work as well as it did in Merle’s Door, which included wonderful stories of Merle’s life as well as interesting sections on dog history and behavior.

Like Kerasote’s other books, Pukka’s Promise is extremely well-written and easy to read.  It’s extensively researched, with 49 pages of notes at the end.  If I want to research more on any of the topics discussed in the book, the notes will be very helpful. 

I highly recommend Pukka’s Promise - but be aware that you (like me) may be resistant to some of Kerasote’s findings and conclusions.  I think it would be a rare person who didn’t learn something (or quite a bit) from this book about helping dogs to live healthier and longer lives.  

You can purchase Pukka's Promise from a number of different retailers.  See Ted Kerasote's website for links to retailers who carry it.  You may also enjoy the Pukka's Promise Facebook page for posts about Pukka and Ted's adventures.