Life With Arlo: Art Edition

I follow an Airedale group on Facebook and have come to realize that my dog Arlo is the same as all the other male Airedales in the world. However, that doesn’t negate the hilarity* of his antics.

In today’s photograph, you’ll notice three pieces of art. The top one is a cut-paper piece that I triplified and took to Florida when I went down there for a week with my other mother Amy and other other mother Theresa. We all have this 6x6” wave crashing in the sunset.

The bottom piece is another 6x6” canvas on which my brother created a random monster with teeth that demand “CALM DOWN.” Both the teeth and the eyes are cut from another canvas and glued on top of this one. I love it.

The last piece is a 4x4” that is part of a series. Each canvas contains a daffodil, a tulip, and an iris. The flowers represent my friendship with two of my high-school friends, Kathy and Erin. Kathy’s birthday is March 3, Erin’s is March 25, and mine is April 8. Because daffodils bloom first, the daffodil on Kathy’s piece is the largest flower. Erin, logically, has an extra-large tulip, while I have the iris as a focal point on mine.

You might also notice that my art is chewed up. Kathy’s and Erin’s pieces (fortunately) are not. But this is what it’s like living with Arlo… If a painting falls off the wall (I’ll own that; I hung it with poster putty) and onto the kitchen counter (that’s all Arlo; he should not be stealing things from the kitchen counter), then there’s a good chance the art will be destroyed.

When I initially came home and found this piece missing from the wall, it was a rainy night and the only immediate remains of the artwork were a few splinters and a staple littering the kitchen floor. I really and truly believed Arlo ate the entire thing! But the next morning I found the canvas in the yard, face down and sopping wet, and I managed to salvage it.

If I’m being honest, I sort of prefer the Arlo alteration. It was never one of my favorite pieces, but now it has a real story to go with it!

The other “Arlo art story” that’s since gone down in history is the night I came home and found the kitchen floor covered in X-acto blades and blood spatter. He had stolen a box of unopened blades (100 of them) from the kitchen table and proceeded to tear it apart. The vet’s office was of course closed at that hour, so this is what I did:

Checked his mouth. Other than a cut or two on his gums, he was fine.

Counted the X-acto blades. There were 100 of them.

Counted the X-acto blades again. Still 100.

Counted the X-acto blades one more time. Yup, 100 of them. He didn’t consume any.

Now I always use nails to hang art that I truly love and never leave anything within reach of my dog. I only hope that when Arlo is reincarnated, he comes back as something very tall and/or with two legs… like a giraffe or a flamingo. He so desperately wants to be taller than he is!

*Hilarity, in this instance, is nearly synonymous with obnoxiousness.