Pursuits : Elizabeth Thomsen

Owney was a stray puppy who wandered into the Albany Post Office in 1888 and fell asleep on a pile of mailbags. He followed the mailbags onto a Railway Mail Service train, beginning a life of riding the rails. He traveled around the country as the unofficial mascot of the Railway Mail Service. According to the National Postal Museum’s website, “Railway mail clerks considered the dog a good luck charm. At a time when train wrecks were all too common, no train Owney rode was ever in a wreck. The Railway mail clerks adopted Owney as their unofficial mascot, marking his travels by placing medals and tags on his collar. Each time Owney returned home to Albany, the clerks there saved the tags.”
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I just set up a new Flickr group called Dogs in Art to bring together all sorts of images of dogs, from classical sculpture to salt and pepper shakers. Vintage postcards, toy dogs, garden decorations, knick knacks, murals, paintings, etc., are all welcome — pretty much any picture of a dog, except for photographs of actual dogs!

Dogs in Art — Link to the Flickr group page

Dog Years is poet Mark Doty’s story of his two dogs, Arden and Beau, and their shared joys and sorrows.

Mark and Arden are living alone with Mark’s lover Wally, who is dying of AIDS, when Mark decides to get another dog. It’s really the last thing they needed, at that point.

In Doty’s words:

My friends think I’ve lost my mind. You’re taking care of a man who can’t get out of bed, and you’re adopting a golden retriever? They do have a point, but there’s a certain dimension of experience at which the addition of any other potential stress simply doesn’t matter anymore. Oh, say the already crazed, why not?

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