Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined themed chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the eighth day of the month is "Art."
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In May, I wrote about meeting up with a friend at the dog park one Saturday morning. In the comments, Anne talked about looking up our dog park online and seeing the sculptures. Our dog park is divided up into four smaller parks (two large dog areas, one small dog area, one area for elderly/injured dogs) and in the Large Dog Area #1, there are two giant sculptures of dogs.
The first time we took Hannah to the dog park, she was terrified of them. She wouldn't go anywhere near them and would basically side-eye them until they were out of visible range. (In her defense, they are HUGE. If they were real, they'd be a serious threat. I can see why she kept a close watch.)
We've slowly been getting her more and more comfortable with them. When I took Hannah to the park last month, I tried to get her to pose in front of them in the same poses because I think the sculptures are based on a German shepherd and I want to see how close Hannah's silhouette matches them, but she was not cooperating. You're not supposed to bring treats into the dog park, so Hannah was distracted by her other doggy friends and there was no incentive for her to stay in the position where I put her, so this is the best of a bad lot.
Anyway. That's all. This is mostly for Anne, so she can see how seriously big those things are with a dog next to them for scale.
Also, our dog park is awesome.
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Are there any cool sculptures in your local parks?
I think your dog park is awesome, BUT, I'm wondering if more dogs- not just Hannah- are afraid of those sculptures. I think they would seem kind of threatening! If I were designing the park I would have put something else there.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen any other dogs as wary of the sculptures as Hannah was. She's always been a bit nervous around sculptures, though. There's a couple of lion statues in our neighborhood that she still jumps at when she sees!
DeleteThose sculptures are cool and having them on the plinth makes them look even more imposing... Agree with Jenny about how many pupsters may be afraid of them though. They're pretty darn intimidating even if the pup doesn't recognize the canine form! That said, it would be so cool to have a profile of Hannah next to one of them... goals :). There are some cool sculptures in the children's section of our horticultural garden... I'll post some soon.
ReplyDeleteMost dogs I see just ignore them! I wonder if a dog who enjoys a dog park is naturally more outgoing and unafraid of new things and so there's a selection of which dogs actually see them, as in, the scaredy dogs just aren't as exposed as the braver dogs.
DeleteI love the sculptures, but I’m here to tell you that my granddog would hate them. Our lake neighbor has a fake dog silhouette to deter geese, and when Zydrunas saw it, he charged at it, dragging me face down 25 feet. He would not do well at that dog park, at least at first.
ReplyDeleteHannah is very similar to Z! I took her for a walk on campus once and there's a bust of some old guy who was important to campus history (he looks like Abe Lincoln) and she was barking and nipping at it and running away and it was not a good scene.
DeleteZ should probably go to the Large Dog Area #2, where there are no sculptures!!!
Wow, your park IS awesome. I never would have thought those sculptures would scare a dog, but duh, it makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI guess I am now wondering if it's a problem for more dogs than just Hannah!
DeleteThose are such great sculptures! But I can understand why they might make Hannah a little uneasy. Super impressed that you were able to improve her comfort to this level!
ReplyDeleteI can't think of a single sculpture in the parks I normally visit... but maybe I just haven't been looking?
On a drive home from a vacation one year, my family and I stopped in a fantastic sculpture garden. Ah, I found it: The Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapid, MI. It was SO GREAT. Beautiful gardens and such a wide array of beautiful and interesting sculptures. I would love to go back someday.
Yes! I've been to the Meijer Gardens! Huge thumbs up and highly recommend it.
Deletehttps://ngradstudent.blogspot.com/2022/07/grand-rapids-trip-days-05-1.html
I have been wanting to do a trip to Grand Rapids forever - and this is one big reason!!!
DeleteHannah is hanging with the big dawgs! Seriously I wouldn't have been able to take in the scale of how big the statues are without having Hannah alongside for reference.
ReplyDeleteI can't think of any sculptures near where I live, but I was blown away this spring when I went back to my childhood hometown of Champaign and went to Allerton Park. Miles and miles of every statue you could imagine. The most recent sculptures that I saw was at the sculpture garden on Kelleys island, but it didn't compare to Allerton.
I've never been to Champaign, but I definitely think I should try to get there!
DeleteFour divisions sounds perfect. Somebody was thinking.
ReplyDeleteIt's really great. There's a park for every dog! I do feel bad for folks with different sized dogs (what do you do if you have one little and one big?), but it's a great system for the most part.
DeleteThese sculptures are beautiful, but yeah, I can see how dogs could be scared/intimidated by them at first.
ReplyDeleteThe sculptures are so fun. They really add to the ambiance of the dog park. They're also a good meeting place if you're meeting up with friends there. (Meet you at the sitting dog statue at 10:15 or whatever!)
DeleteWe have a sculpture park close to the Walker Art Museum but I have not been down there in ages. I usually only go there when we have visitors as the cherry on the spoon is kind of iconic here in Minneapolis. There is also a very large bronze bunny at the intersection of Minnehaha Parkways and Portland Ave. We drive by it on the way to gymnastics and the boys get very excited to see it!
ReplyDeleteYes, the Walker is so great. I love how everyone just poses on top of the sculptures and how iconic all of them are! I honestly am so glad I never saw that terrifying rabbit statue when I lived in Minneapolis!
DeleteThank you! They're awesome but my goodness, they're HUGE. Hannah is not a tiny dog, at all, and she looks pretty darn small next to them.
ReplyDeleteAll we have are the Bucky on Parade sculptures. My favorite - which probably would scare a lot of people - is the one by the InnTowner at Campus & Highland. It's the one that shows Bucky's 'insides' - "Visible Bucky". Check him out: https://news.wisc.edu/bucky-on-parade-feature-philip-salamone/ LOL
Visible Bucky is sort of creepy!
DeleteLook, to be honest, I have a beef with the Bucky statues because there's one in the town where my husband teaches INSTEAD OF the mascot for the university in that town. I find Wisconsin's obsession with UW-Madison to come at the expense of all the other solid state universities here and I'm resentful and bitter. But that's all I'll say about that.