Pop Art Pet Unleashed

Archive for June, 2007

Colorado State University is home to the best School of Veterinary Sciences in the country. That has actually been a benefit to us personally more than once. Not only did Kylie’s Vet graduate from CSU, the clinic actually uses CSU’s lab services, which gives us great confidence when it comes to diagnostics and treatment. There’s no greater peace of mind than having a Vet that you trust!

This week CSU is making national news with it’s plan to implant a prosthetic leg on a dog rescued from Kuwait. Below is the story from Yahoo..

A puppy found hobbling in the Kuwaiti desert has ended up at Colorado State University, where she might be a candidate for an experimental prosthesis that could one day help humans.

Sally, a Saluki, was spotted in the desert several months ago by a volunteer with animal welfare group PAWS and taken to a shelter in Kuwait City. It’s unclear how the dog was injured. Part of the dog’s left hind leg had been severed and a veterinarian in Kuwait wanted to amputate the remaining leg. PAWS volunteer Steve Holden e-mailed his alma mater, CSU, and its veterinary hospital to ask whether that was sound advice.

CSU animal surgeon Erick Egger responded that it was, but that Sally, who he estimated was about a year old, might make a good candidate for new research on grafting prosthetics to bone, which would prevent her from losing more of her leg. PAWS then flew Sally with Holden to Fort Collins, arriving Tuesday.

While humans can be fitted with a prosthetic limb to be strapped on, dogs don’t take to them well. Egger wants to try an “ingrowth” prosthesis. One concept involves inserting a metallic implant at the bone, attaching an artificial limb to the implant, and then allowing bone to grow around it.

“The real critical part that will make it work or not is whether we can get soft tissues like skin and muscle to grow into the metal that extends into the body,” he said. Veterinarian Robert Taylor in Denver has been working on the concept, which perhaps one day could be transferred to humans, Egger said.

It could be a month or two before Sally gets her new leg, he said. He is looking at ways to raise funds to pay for materials, which he estimates could cost about $5,000.

Today we got our first Christmas order! Riggs and Jester, a couple of crazy cats whose dad is way ahead of the pack, will be our first Holiday portrait for ‘07! And they look like they are going to make very merry models for our custom Pop Art style!

While it’s hard to think about Christmas shopping when it’s hotter than you-know-where outside, take our word for it, the next six months are going to fly by. Every year we encourage people to order early (and by early, we mean no later than September), and every year we have clients offering to pay for rush fees and overnight shipping as late as December 20th.

But this year Riggs & Jester have set a great example for all of us, this year we should all avoid the stress and shop early! Then when every body else is rushing around and freaking out, we can relax and enjoy the season.

Our cat portraits and dog portraits make amazing, original gifts for pet-lovers! We often hear from our clients after the holidays that the portrait was the best gift they have ever given, and from the recipients that their Pop Art Pet portrait was the best gift they’ve ever received.

But if that little pep talk isn’t enough to get you motivated, here’s just a little more incentive. If you order a portrait in the next three days as a holiday gift, you will receive a free porcelain ornament featuring your pet’s artwork! Our ornaments are adorable, and it will make a great stocking stuffer to go along with the original dog portrait or cat portrait.

This little, early-bird bonus is only being advertised here, on our blog, so once you place your order please send us an email to let us know that your portrait is a holiday gift and you want your special reward for shopping early. Also you must order before 11:59 pm, mountain time on June 30th to qualify, so please contact us right away if you have any questions.

Happy Holidays!

We saw a story on the local news recently about a summer camp here in Colorado for dogs, where you get to tag along too. Did you know that it’s a popular new trend to take your dog to camp? You can read all about it below, in the story from Yahoo..

Imagine a vacation where your dog can run like the wind, unconstrained by a leash or fences, romp with new canine friends, jump in a lake, play doggie games, and when the day is done, plop down and sleep by your side. Dog camp is where a dog gets to unleash his true canine spirit and strengthen the bond with his beloved human.

Set in gorgeous surroundings, such as in the woods, next to lakes or in the mountains, dog camps provide nature’s beauty for your enjoyment and a fresh new set of tantalizing scents for your dog. Many dog camps provide a robust schedule of activities and programs to choose from, yet you always have the option of just being away from it all, letting your dog be a dog. Some camps focus more on the activities, others more on the relaxation.

The real joy of going to a dog camp is seeing what your dog can do. You may find hidden talents you never knew your dog had. The camps open you and your dog up to new adventures and skills such as agility, lure coursing, herding, Rally-O, freestyle dance, flyball and flying disks. There is often a mixture of dogs who compete and want to get better, and dogs who are trying the sport for the first time. Your dog doesn’t have to be a pro or particularly talented – she just has to be a dog ready to have fun.

Most dogs love the water (except maybe at bath time) and just don’t get a lot of opportunity to take a nice plunge. Many camps offer your dog plenty of swimming and even water games. And at camp, no one cares if your dog gets muddy or shakes the water off on his or her clothes. They’re all “dog people.”

Dog camps offer a lot of human bonding as well. You get to be with others who share your love of dogs. You get campfires, songs, and nature experiences. Your days and nights are filled with as much to do as you please, or the option to do nothing at all.

–From what we have heard, summer camp for you and your dog is quite costly, but according to many attendees, it’s worth every penny! Summer camps for dogs are now operating in many states, an internet search should find one near you to help you find more information about schedules and pricing.

In creating his very POP-ular art, Andy Warhol preferred to work with soup cans and super stars, while our forte is for the four-legged. Did you know, however that in addition to the Pop Art pet portraits we normally do, we have occasionally apply our Pop Art techniques to some other pretty cool stuff?

Well we have decided we should let people know that even if it’s not a unique dog portrait or cool cat portrait you’re in the market for, you shouldn’t rule us out… we’re up for anything! So we added our other “Pop Art Stuff” to the site – you can find it in our Custom Art Gallery.

These whimsical works of art have primarily been purchased as gifts for people who love their [fill-in-the-blank with whatever people collect], and have been very well-received!

We have also done some fabulous work on clients’ vacation pictures and landscape photography. It makes an incredible piece of art for your home that will always have special meaning for you.

We can apply the same techniques to photos of inanimate objects or scenery that we do when we design your one-of-a-kind dog portrait or cat portrait. You just have to tell us what you have in mind.

This custom art created from your photos, will be printed on artist-grade canvas for the look and feel of an actual painting (at a fraction of the cost).

Prices do vary depending on the treatment and the size you select, so please contact us directly to inquire and to order.

This is a great opportunity for you to give a truly unique gift, for any occasion. It’s also great fun for us to broaden our horizons so-to-speak, so please keep us in mind!

We brought you the story of the World’s Ugliest Dog competition last year so we thought we should update you on this year’s results from Yahoo news.

Elwood, a 2-year-old Chinese Crested and Chihuahua mix, was crowned the world’s ugliest dog last week, a distinction that delighted the New Jersey mutt’s owners.

Elwood, dark colored and hairless — save for a mohawk-like puff of white fur on his head — is often referred to as “Yoda,” or “ET,” for his resemblance to those famous science fiction characters.

“I think he’s the cutest thing that ever lived,” said Elwood’s owner, Karen Quigley, a resident of Sewell, New Jersey.

Quigley brought Elwood out to compete for the second year at the annual ugly dog contest at the Marin-Sonoma County Fair. Elwood placed second last year.

Most of the competing canines were also Chinese Crested, a breed that features a mohawk, bug eyes and a long, wagging tongue.

Quigley said she rescued Elwood two years ago. “The breeder was going to euthanize him because she thought he was too ugly to sell,” said Quigley. So ha ha, now Elwood’s all over the Internet and people love him and adore him.” Beyond the regal title of ugliest dog, Elwood also earned a $1,000 reward for his owner.

–As far as we are concerned he proves once again that ugly is in the eye of the beholder!

Also, in the past we have shared the always amusing, though sometimes scary, stories of driving dogs. Well, here’s another such story from Yahoo, of a dog who didn’t even need the keys to drive away in his person’s car with some rather “weird” results..

Bad Dog, Charlie, the black lab drove his owner’s car into the Pend Oreille River in Idaho. As Mark Ewing walked home Wednesday evening after returning from picking up a pizza, Charlie jumped into the car through an open window, and apparently knocked the vehicle into gear.

“He somehow got the car into neutral,” Ewing said. “My car just went boom, down an incline and into the drink.” Ewing could only watch as his Chevy Impala sank into the river. No dummy, Charlie jumped out of the window as the car went downhill.

“There’s nothing weirder than looking at your car cruising down your driveway when you’re not in it and seeing your dog jump out and then watching your car go splash,” Ewing said.

Actually, things did get a little weirder when the tow truck driver showed up. Before the driver dove into the water to hook the car up to his truck, he asked Ewing to hold his dentures. My car’s in the drink, I’ve got dentures in my hand and this guy Keith … goes swimming,” Ewing noted.

–Next time, we suggest you offer Charlie some pizza!

We have recently been featured in two blogs that are big fun in the U.K.! First, ShinyShiny, a great site for gadgets for girls, gave our Pop Art people portraits a bump when they included Pop Art Go in a post:

Pop Art Go, in case you didn’t know, is where we can work the same magic on photos of you or your friends & family that we do when we create our Pop Art dog portraits and cat portraits.

Now, we are flattered to get a mention from RetroToGo, “a guide to all things hip & retro,” which is really cool because obviously we love their stuff too!

They are recommending our Warhol-esque artwork for their readers’ dogs, cats, budgies, or hamsters. (Uh-oh..does anyone know what a “budgie” is?)

We do love our European clients, and the British do love their Pop Art, in fact this fall/winter the National Portrait Gallery in London will be featuring the first major exhibition entirely devoted to Pop Art.

The exhibition titled simply, “Pop Art Portraits” will explore the significance of portraiture within one of the world’s most popular and influential art movements. It brings together over 50 works by 28 American and British Pop artists working on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1950s and 1960s. These include major portraits by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein alongside those of Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and Patrick Caulfield.

“The exhibition examines these artists’ shared engagement with depicting the famous, using images taken from advertising, pop music, the cinema, magazines and newspapers. It also shows how Pop Art shattered the conventions of portraiture, creating a new genre of fantasy portraits using comic books, magazines and other images drawn from popular culture.”

And we are certainly grateful that they did!!

I don’t know how it happened but we almost let this one slip by us..

Take Your Dog To Work Day

It’s tomorrow, Friday the 22nd! So quick, call the boss! Or better yet, don’t give them the opportunity to say no, just put your furry kid in the car before the morning commute!

Pet Sitters International promotes the event and also use it to bring attention to homeless pets and encourage adoption, here are the details:

If you are looking for the perfect way to celebrate your pooch while positively impacting the lives of homeless dogs everywhere, you definitely want to be a part of Pet Sitters International’s Take Your Dog To Work Day® presented by PEDIGREE JUMBONE.

What is TYDTWDay? It’s simple. On Friday, June 22, 2007, pet sitters, animal shelters and businesses of all sizes will come together to recognize the great companions dogs make.

PSI will join pet lovers around the world to celebrate man’s—and woman’s—best friend. This annual event brings people and pets together in a special way on a special day. Dogs go to work. Hearts are touched. And as a result, homeless dogs will be adopted. PSI’s Take Your Dog To Work Day is the day for dogs and we want YOU and your dog to be a part of it.

They’re also having a “what’s your dog doing at work” photo contest so be sure and take your camera too and snap a picture of Fido doing your filing!!

Does your pet party like a rock star? If so we have a new form of art that’s perfect for them…  Album Cover Art

It doesn’t matter if your dog’s a fan of classic rock or your cat just loves the classics, we can make them look like a star on the cover of their own album!

Once again Kylie artistically inspired us to create this new form of dog portrait when we had her picture taken in her hot new hoodie.We joked that she looked like a Rap star and a light bulb went on! Since then we’ve been doing Album Cover Art for friends and family featuring their pets, and everybody has just loved it; so we thought you might too! Here’s how it works…

Once you order your Animal Album Cover, you’ll send us a picture or two or three to work with. You can let us know the style of music and song title (use a real one or make one up) you would like us to use. And that’s it! We’ll come up with a rockin’ cover for you! Your pet’s album cover will be printed on premium photo paper, 12×12 (same size as the real thing), and framed in an album collector’s frame. Check out the animal album cover art we’ve already done in our Custom Art Gallery.

This fun and unique new form of dog portraits and cat portraits is only available from Pop Art Pet, and starts at just $70 so contact us today to produce your album.

ps: This is a fantastic gift for any occassion, for pet lovers or music lovers!

pss: If you don’t know what an “album cover” is, go ask your parents!

Did you know that we offer our dog portraits and cat portraits in standard sizes up to 36″x36″? We have even done some custom sized portraits recently up to 36″x42″. That may not sound that impressive but we are always excited when our clients go big, and this summer everybody seems to think bigger is better! Almost all our orders lately are for large and extra large portraits, and our clients have also been opting for the drama of the premium stretcher bars which is especially effective for these big pet portraits.

For example we just completed Chester’s comic portrait, a great big, Bearded Collie in the U.K. Originally Chester’s dad wanted a great big, 36″ portrait with a thought bubble featuring one of Chester’s great loves.. either chicken or the garden hose he uses to play tug-o-war with the children. When he saw how great Chester looked on the vibrant backgrounds however, he decided Chester could stand alone, and we quite agree.

We sent him this picture as a preview before we shipped it out.

(Kylie posed adorably in front for scale)

Now that’s a big dog portrait!!

And now we are happy to be working on another big dog portrait for another big dog, Holly, Chester’s sister!

The story about Rita, the Hurricane Katrina refugee who is just now returning to her New Orleans home, is a reminder of the negative impact that Katrina is still having on the animals there. In fact we found this story just this week about the second generation of Katrina’s homeless and abandoned pets:

In New Orleans advocates struggle to deal with animals whose owners can no longer care for them, and with the offspring of cats and dogs lost in the hurricane. Like Hank, a purebred golden retriever, is typical of the second wave of pet problems here in the 21 months since Hurricane Katrina hit.

The first crisis was those pets who were lost, abandoned or killed in the storm and its immediate aftermath.

Now there are pets like Hank, who stayed with his New Orleans East owners for the first 10 months after Katrina, which submerged their home in 7 feet of water. After moving several times and struggling to rebuild their lives, Hank’s owners realized they could no longer cope with owning a dog.

So they surrendered Hank to Animal Rescue New Orleans, or ARNO, a grass-roots group that cares for animals left behind or separated from their owners. ARNO was founded shortly after the storm and survives on donations from volunteers, private sources and other nonprofit groups.

Hank bounded with joy as ARNO shelter coordinator Robin Beaulieu entered his pen recently. Hank flipped onto his back for a tummy rub.

“He loves to be petted and groomed,” Beaulieu said.

The dog has lived at ARNO for the last eight months while he awaits a new home.

Animal advocates say many pet owners living in trailers and tight on cash while they rebuild flood-damaged homes opt to give up their animals because they don’t have space or can no longer afford to keep them.

“So many people out there need help with their pets,” said Charlotte Bass Lilly, ARNO’s executive director.

Beaulieu estimated that the number of families surrendering their pets to shelters had gone up between 45 percent and 60 percent since Katrina. Laura K. Maloney, executive director of the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said some of the animals up for adoption by her agency could be the offspring of animals separated from their families since the storm, but many were pets relinquished by their owners.

According to LA/SPCA statistics, about 259,400 families owned pets in Orleans Parish before the storm. As many as 104,000 pets were left behind after Katrina; about 15,000 were officially rescued. An estimated 3,000 have been reunited with their families, and at least 88,700 remain unaccounted for, Maloney said. Thousands of the pets unaccounted for are believed to have died.

ARNO and other animal-advocacy groups believe that many strays on the streets are “Katrina pets” and their fourth- or fifth-generation offspring. And many have not been spayed or neutered.

Bass Lilly said that unscientific counts by ARNO volunteers who manage the group’s 3,000 feeding stations throughout Orleans, Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes estimate that as many as 40,000 cats and 5,000 dogs are on the streets.

“There are still dogs out there with collars,” Bass Lilly said.

Although stray or abandoned animals were not unique to New Orleans, “what makes it different is that these animals are homeless, with no food, water and no garbage to forage. They’re basically in a stress situation.”

University of Pennsylvania researchers surveyed six areas of Orleans and St. Bernard parishes on behalf of the LA/SPCA six months after the storm and found that “relatively few” homeless animals remained.

Maloney said that feeding stations were not “in the best interest” of stray animals and made it more challenging to capture them.

“We are taking animals that are left there, and we are sustaining them,” she added. “That really doesn’t solve our problem. We are helping create more homeless kittens and puppies, and we need to stop.”

ARNO’s food sites cover a 685-square-mile radius, Beaulieu said. Volunteer trappers capture the animals for sterilization. Feral cats are trapped, neutered and released.

Bass Lilly said that over the last nine months, her group had found new homes for about 200 animals a month. And since Katrina, the volunteers had helped reunite between 50 and 70 pets with their original owners, Bass Lilly said.

Reunifications are still crucial almost two years after the storm.

“Every day, animals show up,” said Laura Bergerol, a volunteer with a grass-roots online group called the Katrina Animal Reunion Team.

The animals are featured in newspaper ads, on Web sites advertising missing pets, and even on Craig’s List, said Bergerol, who is based in Palo Alto.

There are about 200 animals living at ARNO’s shelter, housed in a warehouse in Jefferson Parish. Bass Lilly said the group had a “no kill” policy.

One day last week, a cacophony of barks blended with the occasional purr as Beaulieu showed volunteer Ray Forrester how to trap five kittens he spotted in his neighborhood.

“You line the cage with newspaper and put food on it,” Beaulieu said. “The best thing to use is sardines. And Popeye’s fried chicken works wonders.”

Cats typically are trapped in cages, dogs often with a noose. It can take several months to win an animal’s confidence so that it is willingly captured.

With the population of New Orleans down to half its size, and thousands of people across Louisiana living in cramped trailers, there are fewer local takers for Katrina pets. So the group is working with partners nationwide to find new homes for the animals.

“Katrina animal celebrity is a way to make people feel they are directly helping with Katrina,” Beaulieu said.

Source: LA Times