May 16, 2016

White Dog and all of the White Dog Army have lived their days at White Dog Ranch with an articulated carved wooden skeleton from Bali. It was a birthday gift from Steve oh so many years ago and has served as phone butler, for a while, keys and change catchall, and for quite some time a feathered mask and African bead wearing caryatid at the entrance to the sleeping side of the house.

Every so often, Sachi will mark her leg or Zsofia will try to steal one of her arms or Puff will curl up on her feet of wood. But otherwise, no notice or attachment is shown.

Steve is doing a bit of jewelry photography and wanted to show the pieces hanging as they would be worn instead of just flat on a surface. He came up with the idea of wrapping my skeleton lady in my large white linen shawl so that the camera saw a chest shape background for the pieces. To make sure he did not accidentally end up with bits of skeleton showing, he also wrapped the bone girl's head. The effect was that of a partially wrapped mummy.

It took a bit after set up to arrange lights and such.

Stormer took up position behind the camera and lay watching for a few minutes. Then he started barking...at the skeleton. "Baby Boy, it is OK," I told him, "it is the same as ever except with new clothes just for a little while. Dad is doing some work."

He looked at me and tossed his head before returning his gaze to the "mummy" and resuming his chant for her "to go." "He must of been a Pharaoh dog in another life," White Dog laughted. It was funny but not.

Poor CA was genuinely unhappy with the presence. Ultimately, I brought him with me to the office to supervise my work which was skeleton-free. Out of sight of the wrapped wooden statue, he was fine.

Steve finished what he needed to do and returned things to normal. He called Stormer out to see. "All better now?" Steve asked? Storm looked around the room and settled down to face the skeleton. He looked for quite some time before giving an unconvincing "yes" woof.

But I noticed all evening he has never turned his back on the thing.