Anyone can....train a dog

Dogs.....oh how I've been wanting a dog........A cute dog that will travel with me in my car. I just love to see dogs in cars with their heads out of the window, the wind blowing back their ears....it's just a picture of pure joy! And I've never seen so many dogs in cars and trucks as I have in California. The dogs here must just love the weather and the "wine country living"! You see them yapping in the delight of it all. I've mentioned to some of my friends my desire of having a dog passenger in my car and that maybe I could borrow their dog sometime and take it for a drive.........

All this talk of "borrowing" is because I can't have a dog of my own :-( Yes, we have a great lawn that it could run on....but we do travel quite a bit...and so I've been "told" it just isn't practical....and also, we grow grapes and grapes are poisonous to dogs (but loads of wineries have dogs????). Anyhow - right now, it's not dog time for me - (although one day I will replace my husband with a dog.............)!

So currently, I just enjoy other people's dogs - like KJ, and Scout......and those that I see in cars in trucks!

As I can't have a dog - I thought maybe I could live vicariously through "anyone". So my latest "anyone can...." piece is "anyone can train a dog". But Anyone isn't content with commands like "sit"..he is much more adventurous! This is like agility training!!! Anyone is teaching his little dog to jump through hoops!! Way to go anyone!!!!

It is a lariat style necklace - and features "anyone" holding the loop and then the little dog - with one ear up and one down jumps through the hoop and hangs down below. There is a little hook on the back of the hoop to secure the chain at the length you like.

This was my first attempt at sculpting a dog and it was an interesting process! I first tried making a dog in regular clay...and it took a while to find that the nose was an important feature that distinguished it from some other animal. Once I cracked the nose (so to speak) I tried the dog in the silver clay. I was thinking of adding silver wire legs with hammered feet - but when I tried that - they looked too skinny. So I made some legs from clay and attached them...along with a curled up tail.

But it looked like a pig!!! So I figured it must be the tail...the ears looked good...the nose looked good....so I pulled the tail off. I tried another tail curling up - but it still looked like a pig.....so off it came. Then I tried a stubby tail like lots of dogs have. It looked like a dogs tail alright - but it still looked like a pig.....

So I started working on the back legs....making them more muscley where they join on to the body......but it still looked like a pig!! What was it???

Then I got it - he didn't have any paws!!! I'd done legs but not little paws...so it looked more like trotters and thus a pig!!! It was interesting how one characteristic can change an "animal" so much. The face was a dog, the legs were dogs, the tail was a dog.......but it was still a pig!!

So, I gave him four little paws and Anyone now has a dog!!! And a name for Anyone's dog.......??? How about Doug the Dog....(as in "dug"??!!)