Many Parts Make a Dog

 

Blog 13


When I recently posted the above picture on my Facebook page, some people got curious about my needle-felted sculpture of Alex, a miniature version of our Australian Shepherd.

Alex was our foster dog. I picked him up from his former owner after neighbours had complained to a dog rescue organization that they had seen that the owner kept Alex in a crate in a garage at all times and dragged Alex back home on his collar if he managed to escape his confinement. I loved Alex from the first moment I saw him, and I am sure it was mutual.


It took me a couple of days to convince my husband that we should keep him because we already had a Golden Retriever. We live in the country, and space was no problem, but we had to figure out if we could afford a second dog. In the end, Alex's zest for life won us all over.


He and Candy were a good match. Candy was exceptionally laid-back, more a cat than a dog, and hated exercise. However, Alex's infectious personality brought out the dog in her. Both Candy and Alex lost a lot of hair. However, for many years we threw it out like probably most people. When I spent more time felting, I read about the possibility to needle-felt dog fur. I started – to my family’s horror – to collect our hair for future projects.


I was curious how the fur would perform for needle felting and began to create a model of Candy’s head. When she died unexpectedly, I put the sculpted head and the rest of her fur in a box in the basement where it still awaits further attention.


After Candy’s death, I started a sculpture of Alex. I stopped several times - either because I had to wait for Alex to lose more fur or because I got busy with other projects. Twice our cat, Miko, ripped my work apart when he kneaded the body to create a comfortable nest for a nap. Miko loved cuddling up with my sculpture, while he usually was too scared to search for the closeness of the actual dog.





The whole body is out of his fur. Most of it comes from his undercoat, so the felted dog is lighter than Alex. Only the nails, the dark areas around his eyes and the snout are wool. I formed his nose out of air-dry clay and gave him glass eyes.

I stopped counting the hours once I passed 100. I still worked on this sculpture long into the night before his death, with him lying at my feet. I cherish these last quiet hours with him.


The sculpture is a tangible memory of our beloved Alex. Whenever I pet his soft fur, it makes me feel at peace and happy. 

While I only create needle-felted sculptures of our family members, I accept commissions of needle-felted paintings of your beloved pet. To receive more information, contact me at info@KerstinPeters.ca.