The Dog Lanterns’ Pet Portraits!

I decided I wanted to have some portraits done of the dogs. This is why I asked in a war update post a few weeks ago for contact info for Larime, which Cole provided. Larime is now back up and running in the making art business after Sylv’s passing last year and all the craziness that goes along with that and I figured now was a good time to have it done. They did the two current doggos, my previous three who have passed on, and they also did my brother’s dog and cat. I’m not posting these last two because I haven’t given them to my brother and sister in law yet and because I have no idea if they’d want their pets’ portraits posted on the Internet. So nobody ruin the surprise!

I’m going to post the portraits of Rosie and Ruby, my two current lab mixes, above the jump and the remaining three portraits of Genni, Kylie, and Blue after the jump.

I asked Larime to do two-in-one portraits of Rosie and Ruby that included them as puppies and as adults. I have good quality pics of them from 3 months old until just last week (over the past thirteen years for Rosie and 10 for Ruby), but not for the others as they were puppies well before we all had good quality cameras in our phones.

Here is Rosie. She’s a black Lab and either German shepherd or Belgian shepherd dog. Rosie has the longer, leaner Belgian shepherd dog body, the lab face, and ears that are sort of in between. She also has a partially purple tongue.  And she’s got a ruff and the double coat and is currently the resident Flooferina. The puppy photo Larime used was what was advertised by the rescue organization and, once you see Kylie’s portrait, you’ll understand one of the reasons I thought to adopt her. The adult pic I sent to Larime is of her hanging over the edge of the couch.

(Rosie)

Here is Ruby. Ruby is a chocolate Lab mixed with ? The rescue thought her mom was a Lab/boxer mix, but Ruby has the body of a Bull & Terrier (and the permanent toddler disposition to go with it). She also has crystal eyes and spots on her paws, which are hallmarks of a Catahoula leopard dog. She also has a white tip on her tale, so beagle? She’s predominantly chocolate covered, but has caramel brindle markings, as well as a cream patch on her chest, and cream socks with brindle spots on her paws. The puppy photo I sent to Larime, which is the upper image in the portrait below, is of a two or three month old Ruby running across the wood floor at the foster family’s house in PA. I like to refer to it as the “NO BREAKS!!!!” puppy pic. This was the same foster family and rescue organization I got Rosie from. When Kylie died I reached out immediately about adopting a puppy after a two to three months.

The adult pic was taken after an annual vet visit. She hopped into the driver seat of my car and grinned up at me with the look you see below as if to say “GET IN THE CAR!! NO TIME TO EXPLAIN!!” The next pic I took right after that, not included in the portraits has her looking at the dash like “how do you start this thing?” Ruby is my forever toddler. And despite a fierce bark, she’s a sensitive soul who just wants to be next to or on me at all times.

(Ruby)

Genni, Kylie, and Blue after the jump.

Here is Genni, pronounced Jenny. We were just mucking about with the spelling. Genni was the first dog I owned all by myself. I got her just before I started by doctoral program. She was either a greyhound/terrier mix or a whippet/terrier mix. No picture ever did her coloring justice. She was strawberry blonde on top and straw blonde on the belly, had a pink nose, and could run! Larime had to work from two different photos to produce this portrait as all the phone camera pics I had of her are prior to 2011 and, as a result, not particularly high resolution. But Larime pulled it off.

(Genni)

And here is the Flooferina herself, Kylie. Kylie was a black Lab/Australian shepherd mix. She was the single most chill dog I’ve ever had and probably ever met. A woman who lived in my apartment complex when I was doing my doctorate was fostering her to keep her out of a no kill shelter and she and Genni used to play together. We adopted her when she was about one. Kylie was about eleven or twelve in this pic and her muzzle had gone from black to white. As you can see she was floofy. She had a rough and the double coat. When I started looking for a puppy after Genni died and saw that puppy pic of Rosie I decided that if they got along, that was the puppy I was going to try to adopt as they looked so similar. The foster family brought her over, they hit it off, and Rosie joined us about four or five weeks later.

Last, but certainly not least is my big, wild, sad boy Blue. Blue was a purebred blue tick coonhound. In early January 2005 when I was driving back from spending winter break at the family’s house in the mountains of New Mexico, I detoured on the way back to Philadelphia – I was teaching at Temple – to visit an old friend from grad school who lived in Kansas. As I made my way east from KC, about 70 miles east of KC in about 4 degree weather, I see this skeletal looking dog running down the median of the interstate. I managed to pull onto the median and with Genni and Kylie barking, managed to get him into my 4Runner. He was skin and bones and had no tags. I checked all the stores, gas stations, and shops at the closet exit and there were no missing dog signs. I found a vet an hour or so down the road and had him checked for a microchip. There was none. We got to the hotel we were staying in that night and he got a couple of small meals, water, a warm flea/tick shampoo bath, a walk, and joined the family. He was never really sure about the family bit. The vet in Missouri, as well as my own back in the Philadelphia suburbs who was from KC originally, figure he was about two years old and think he probably got dumped after hunting season. I nursed him back to health two times after that first time, but he eventually passed two weeks before I left to go to training to deploy to Iraq. He only made it to five or six, but Genni, Kylie, and I gave him the best life we could.

If you’re interested in having your pet’s portrait done, here’s the link to Larime’s site, to their Twitter/X account, and to their Bluesky account. They also have a YouTube podcast series.

So that’s the pet portraits. I’m thrilled.

I’ll be back later with the Ukraine War Update.

Open thread!