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“Dogs Rule, Nonchalantly” by Mark Ulriksen
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Pet Tales: An illustrator falls in love with dogs

Pet Tales: An illustrator falls in love with dogs

Twelve yellow-framed windows are closely spaced on the front of a three-story red-brick townhouse. A dog intently peers out of each window, looking toward the street.

The intricately detailed acrylic painting depicts dogs of many sizes, colors and breeds, including a beagle, a Chihuahua, a Boston terrier and a chocolate Labrador retriever that looks just like the tail-wagger on the cover of the book “Dogs Rule, Nonchalantly” by Mark Ulriksen.

Dogs are loyal and patient, and “whether you’ve been gone for 5 minutes or for 5 hours, they’ll greet you like you’ve been gone for 5 years,” says the text next to the painting of 12 doggies in the windows.

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Mr. Ulriksen originally created the painting for a 2007 cover of The New Yorker. A freelance artist and illustrator since 1994, he’s done 49 covers for the fabled magazine.

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The 143-page book is filled with 67 beautifully reproduced, brightly colored paintings of dogs — including “The Dogs of My Life,” as Mr. Ulriksen titles one of the six paintings he did specifically for this book.

The last three pages have thumbnail pictures of each painting, telling us where they were originally displayed or reproduced. They appeared on the covers or inside pages of The New Yorker and The Atlantic, a children’s book called “Dog Show,” Bark magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, and O, The Oprah Magazine. 

Others were painted for gallery shows or were privately commissioned. Mr. Ulriksen, a self-taught painter and illustrator, had 100 dog paintings to pick from for his own book.

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“Dogs Rule, Nonchalantly” is a celebration of life with dogs — other people’s dogs and his own dogs, especially chocolate Labs Ted and Henry.

“My two retrievers couldn’t have been more different,” he writes.

“Ted — Never spent a single night in a kennel. Too many friends wanted to dog-sit him.”

“Henry — On his first sleepover with friends, pooped in their living room, dining room and kitchen. Henry has stayed in many kennels.”

For a professional artist and illustrator, he writes lovely prose. It’s very brief, concise, charming and funny. Toward the end of the book it’s poignant but never maudlin: “Dogs have such short lives. They deserve to be spoiled,” he writes on page 123.

“Ted was a perfect dog: smart, friendly and obedient,” he writes on page 25.

“As Ted grew old and feeble he became more stoic. He had done all the barking, fetching, scratching, licking, scarfing, chasing, leaning, snuggling, shedding and drooling that he was meant to do. It was his time to move on. He never whined or whimpered,” he wrote on page 125.

“I cried for a week,” Mr. Ulriksen wrote on the next page, opposite a 2003 painting, “Ted in Heaven.” It shows a blissed-out chocolate Lab on a white cloud, surrounded by green tennis balls with angel wings.

A San Francisco native, Mr. Ulriksen and his wife, professional photographer Leslie Flores, live in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood with daughters Emmy, 23, and Lily, 18, and Henry, 12, the Dogs Rule cover dog.

Twenty years ago he said he was “burned out as a magazine art director and wondered what if I could just stay at home and draw,” he said in a telephone interview. “I was 37 years old and had a 2-year-old” when he quit his job.

He quickly got work in Rolling Stone, Esquire and GQ, and has been earning a good living ever since.

Go to markulriksen.com to see some of his other paintings, including those depicting another personal passion, baseball in general and the San Francisco Giants in particular. He has done baseball paintings for The New Yorker and other magazines. He produces fine art commemorative prints when his home team plays in the World Series, which seems to be almost constantly, lately.

“Sorry the Giants beat your Pirates,“ he was kind enough to say of last year’s wild card playoff game.

The book is $29.95 and published by Goff Books/ORO Editions in San Francisco. 

Service animal exams

Owners of service dogs and other working animals have until April 30 to sign up their animals for free exams in the ACVO/StokesRx National Service Animal Eye Exam Event.

ACVO is the American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists. Locally, veterinary eye specialists Lawrence Bagley, Rachel Keller and Michael Finn will conduct exams at Pittsburgh Veterinary Specialty & Emergency Center in Ohio Township. 

Free exams are available to “active working animals” that have certified proof they are trained to guide the blind, assist with the disabled, detect drugs and other substances, do military work, police K-9, search and rescue, and certified therapy animals with current registrations.

Go to www.ACVOeyeexam.org to register. If you qualify, you’ll get a registration number to give to the local participating veterinary eye specialist. You’ll schedule a free exam for May 1-31.

Cans fundraiser

All the nice people who collected aluminum pet food cans have raised more than $9,600 for the Animal Rescue League Shelter & Wildlife Center. 

Cans for Pets was funded by Alcoa Foundation and coordinated by the Pennsylvania Resources Council. The project offered a 5-cent donation to a local animal shelter for every recycled aluminum pet food can.

Since its launch in Pennsylvania in 2012, the pilot program expanded to help shelter animals in Indiana, Iowa, Tennessee and Texas.

More than 300,000 aluminum pet food cans were collected, raising more than $15,000 for medical care, food and adoption support for shelters. 

The lion’s share was collected in Pittsburgh — 192,821 cans.

Animal shelters that would like to join the effort should contact PRC at infowest@prc.org to get instructions for recycling aluminum pet food cans.  

Linda Wilson Fuoco: lfuoco@post-gazette.com or 412-263-3064.

 

First Published: April 11, 2015, 4:00 a.m.

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“Dogs Rule, Nonchalantly” by Mark Ulriksen
12 doggies in the windows - Mr. Ulriksen originally created the painting for a 2007 cover of The New Yorker.
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