My Copy of Jeremy Nguyen's Can I Pet Your Dog?

New Yorker cartoonist Jeremy Nguyen's first solo book is out and it's called Can I Pet Your Dog? It is a colorful compendium of offbeat strategies for petting other people's dogs. I purchased a copy online through the cartoonist's website and sent him a photo of my dog Minty whose portrait Jeremy kindly sketched in the book. Not a bad deal for $15 postpaid. I added another $10 for Pup: A Zine of Dog Cartoons. I'm generally not much of a zine person, but fill one with dog cartoons and I'm not going to say no.

Jeremy Nguyen
Pup: A Zine of Dog Cartoons and Can I Pet Your Dog?

The book is signed and paw-printed. It includes an original drawing of my dog Minty.

Like the book, the zine is signed by Jeremy and pawprint-signed by a cavapoo acquaintance of his named Lava, the one on the book's cover.

Note:  The very offer I took advantage of is still available on Jeremy's website here.

Minty is an eleven-year-old maltipoo. Here is her reference photo. Would you like to pet her?

04154

Resting in Comfort

It's been an exhausting week.

Note:  This blog has a lot more for dog lovers.

01851

The Three Pets

I never dreamed my household would one day have three pets. As you can see, the  place is more theirs than mine.

Note:  Check out the archives for the truth about cats and dogs.

Spring has sprung.

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The Cat Grooms the Dog

What do you know? One of our cats, Amber, grooms the dog, Minty. Then she thinks better of it.

Note:  Would you like to know the truth about cats and dogs? It's all right here in the archives.

There are only three more days until autumn. I've got three posts in the archives about the coming season. Do the math.

01629

The Dog Turns Three

It's the dog's birthday again. Minty turns three today. Here are some photos of her taken this past year.

Note:  Here are some more blog posts about Minty.

Here's some more about dogs.

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The Dog's Birthday

Today our dog Minty turns two. Here are a handful of photographs from her second year.

And...

James Thurber, Spot Drawing,
The New Yorker, June 4, 1949

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Blog Post No. 200: A Shaggy Dog Story

As our lives and experiences change, our relationship to to art can evolve as well. To use myself as a ready example, Mary Cassatt's amazing drypoints of mothers and children didn't resonate with me emotionally until I became a parent. When I was younger, it was not, of course, the art that was at fault; I just wasn't ready for it.

Sale 2254 Lot 19

MARY CASSATT 
Looking into the Hand Mirror.

Drypoint on cream laid paper, 1905. 209x147 mm; 8x5 7/8 inches, full margins. A very good impression. Breeskin 202. 

Estimate $1,200-1,800

Sold for $1,300

http://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/asp/fullCatalogue.asp?salelot=2254++++++19+&refno=++648166&saletype=

As a direct consequence of parenthood, I now find my life has been altered again, mostly for the better, by the addition of a new puppy, the first I've had since my childhood. Minty is a maltipoo, a mix of a maltese and a poodle. Here she is:

Minty

As you might have gathered, I spend a lot of time musing about cartoons and illustrations. With the new dog, I find I am reminded these days of a classic Peter Arno cartoon:

Peter Arno, The New Yorker, April 8, 1944, Page 23

As it happens, I had the opportunity to buy the original art to this maybe 25 years ago, and I passed. You know, you simply can't a buy every wonderful thing that comes along. Today, of course, the old gag has an immediacy it didn't have before. I liked it back then too, but now it has personal meaning. Sometimes life can change what's important and relevant, and this allows you to see things from a fresh perspective.

More people seem to be seeing this blog from a fresh perspective.  When I evaluated the blog at the time of my 100th post, there were only 70 page views per day over the previous month and I had only five followers. Now, at Blog Post No. 200, the daily page view count is about 250 and the number of followers ten, none of whom have ever met me in the real world. The blog's readership increased sharply this past week with the unfortunate passing of Ronald Searle and the 100th birthday of Charles Addams, but I suspect things will slow down now as the world gets back to its usual routine. Incidentally, with the surge in new readers this week, none elected to become followers of this blog.

Peter Arno, The New Yorker, April 8, 1944, Page 23

Peter Arno, The New Yorker, April 8, 1944, p. 23

Image added January 1, 2014

http://eu.art.com/products/p15063669783-sa-i6855242/peter-arno-sheepdog-dog-brings-his-master-a-pair-of-shears-new-yorker-cartoon.htm

Peter Arno, Man in the Shower. New York:  Simon & Schuster, 1944.

Image added January 1, 2014

http://www.rarebookcellar.com/?page=shop/flypage&product_id=103989&keyword=Peter+Arno&searchby=author&offset=0&fs=1

Note:  My last post of 2011 about Peter Arno is here.

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