The Studio Dog—WALTER
There are no paintings getting made today. There is just grief, and a very quiet studio, and the particular silence of a space that used to have an extra heartbeat in it.
Walter is gone. He was seven years old. Up until a week ago, I thought we had many more years of walks and workshops and somersaults ahead of us. He was handsome and svelte and carried himself like he knew it, which was often and always spectacular. And then suddenly he was sick. An advanced, inoperable tumor that moved faster than any of us could. That is the brutal math of dogs. They never get enough years, and sometimes they get even fewer.
Walter came to us the Christmas the studio was finished, just a few months before COVID arrived and rearranged everything about daily life. We rescued him, and then he spent the next few years rescuing us right back. I'm not sure we would have stayed nearly as sane without him: we walked for miles, exploring quiet, abandoned-feeling places while the world shut down. He made us laugh, pulled us outside of our own worry, and reminded us to take that anxious, frightening time one day at a time. It also gave him space to heal from his street-dog days and learn what it meant to be home.
He was, from the very beginning, a studio dog. Every morning when I went out to turn on the wax, he trotted out with me and hopped onto the studio couch like he owned it, which he did. He greeted every student and guest at the gate with enormous ceremony, escorting them back to the studio and announcing their arrival with his husky howling, my personal doorbell. If you've ever come for a workshop here, you were almost certainly welcomed by Walter first and me second. He was famously and shamelessly spoiled during workshop lunchtimes by students who knew exactly what they were doing, and so did he.
The kitchen was his other domain, a space he took seriously and shared reluctantly. He’d sit across the counter with a focused, dignified patience, watching my every move as if I were a contestant on Top Chef. While he was a spectacular catch (no matter how poorly I aimed) he remained a discerning critic, immediately spitting out any vegetable like a finicky toddler. He maintained a hypervigilant zone around his food bowl, guarding it with the fierce, perfectly reasonable suspicion of a self-respecting rescue dog.
He was naturally stoic and carried himself with a quiet physical confidence that could, without warning, erupt into something completely ridiculous. Everything he did, he did with his whole body.
He'd tear after balls at full speed across the whole length of the park, grab them in a little tuck-and-roll, then pop up and look around proudly, making sure someone had seen him stick the landing. Every afternoon around 4pm, he decided his ‘nap’ was over and it was time to move. If I tried to ignore him, he escalated: butt in the air, somersaulting on the couch with wild crazy eyes, until I put the brush down or shut the computer. He dragged me out for miles of walking over the years, deadlines and all. Jon walked him several miles every day after work too so he clocked an average of 4-5 miles a day minimum.
He hated baths but loved mud puddles, face first, blowing bubbles, zooming around in pure joy, covered head to toe. He also had a remarkable talent for finding the one skunk in every alley in Portland. BTW: the remedy was hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and vinegar, essentially ingredients one of my pigment experiments. FYI:Do not let the dog in the house first. BAD. We know this now. In the end he would submit to the whole outdoor production with stoic dignity, and shake himself off until the next adventure.
And then there was his other form of physical self-expression, the one that required vigilance on our part and a certain amount of diplomacy with strangers. He was, in his younger years, extremely committed to leaving his mark on the world in the most literal sense. On park and beach walks almost anything was fair game: sandcastles (whether being actively worked on or not), momentarily abandoned toys, strollers (occupied or not), every base and cone on a ball field, and backpacks or bags left anywhere near anyone eating in the grass. During COVID, when outdoor chair yoga was briefly a thing, he marched directly up to a woman mid-pose and marked the leg of her chair. While she was sitting in it. She was not amused, and we were mortified. He got considerably better about it as he got older, but the urge to leave his signature never really left him. He was a boy dog through and through.
He kept me company through all the in-between: the tedious parts of the day, the painting no one sees, the failed experiments, the muttering about color and composition, the endless computer work. Because he was there, hanging on the couch, I could talk out loud without feeling like the crazy lady next door (even if I might actually be). He listened to every half-baked idea and every fully dramatic rant with the same steady, chill, stoic look.
When he suddenly didn't want to go-go-go and stopped eating, we knew something was wrong. We rushed him in hoping it was something simple. It was not.
He made the studio feel safe. He died on that studio couch looking out into the back yard, held by me, in the place he loved most. I can't think of a better place for him to have gone, and returning to the studio will be sad, but I know he is still there in his own way.
Walter was loved extravagantly by everyone who met him, and he accepted that love as his due, which was exactly right. He deserved every bit of it.
Rest easy, sweet boy. You were the best studio dog there ever was.
