LiveAuctionTalk Highlights the World of Dog Art in its Weekly Free Column

—-For Immediate Release—-

May 21, 2006—Dano Miller was a 19-year-old kid when he volunteered for the Marines and Vietnam. In all his young years he never imagined his closet comrade would turn out to be a 65-pound German Shepard named Sugar.

Walking on patrols and in special operations, Miller and Sugar were always about 100 meters in front of the troops. The duo worked together like finely tuned war machines as they cleared out enemy burrows, uncovered booby traps, and rooted out unseen Viet Cong.

Everyone behind them depended on how well Sugar worked and how well Miller could read her signals. The two were so close they often drank from the same canteen and ate from the same dog food can.

If you asked Miller, he would tell you that he and his fellow soldiers owed their lives to thousands of dogs like Sugar in Vietnam.

“Sometimes, when she (Sugar) had complete heat exhaustion, I would pick her up and away we’d go,” Miller said. In the severe heat of Vietnam both he and the dog dropped 20 pounds. “Marines don’t leave other Marines behind.”

At the end of Miller’s tour, that’s exactly what he was forced to do. The Marine Corps brass denied his request to bring Sugar home with him. She died a few weeks after Miller left Vietnam from a mosquito-borne blood disease.

“I tried drinking all the Jack Daniels in the state of Florida,” Miller said.

If you ever loved and lost a dog, you can understand why a dog portrait can mean a lot to someone. It’s a way of making something intangible, tangible. A way to celebrate a life. A way to say thank you.

In dog art you’ll see three basic collecting areas. There are the sporting scenes which include everything from setters in the field with the daily catch to hounds hounding the fox.

Next there are the breed portraits, a love song in oil to all the different dogs in the world. This includes German Shepards, Pointers, English Setters, Collies, Greyhounds, Jack Russell Terriers, you name it.

Finally, there are the genre paintings depicting everything from dogs playing with their puppies and wearing spectacles and reading books to playing poker. They mimic their human companions in many of these paintings. No surprise.

On Feb.14, Doyle, New York, featured its 8th annual Dogs in Art auction. Coinciding each year with the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, the auction contained four centuries of canine paintings and sculpture.