George and Patches dog rug

I tried to upload a photo of this rug on ning today, but it posted all stretched out, so I thought I would post it here. Diane Phillips was the feature teacher this year at Sauder. A few years ago, I took a one day class at Sauder from her. The class was about hooking dogs. The photo is of the rug I started in that class. The cloud dogs are Shady, Shep, and Ben, three of my best friends who have crossed over the bar. George and Patches are two of my current best friends. George was explaining a little about civilization to Patches, who joined our family after her first two horrible years - the first year she was shut in a basement and completely ignored, the second year she was adopted by a new family who moved and left her behind - she lived wild for a year, until the people who owned the chickens she was feeding on caught her and turned her in. She came to us because I was her breeder. Her mother is Blue, who still runs herd on our pack, and her father was Ben, the smallest cloud dog.

Diane Phillips hooks with the people in Vermont who are always sort of pushing the envelope, experimenting with the artistic aspects of hooking, so her rugs are quite varied. She had a number of dog rugs on display at Sauder, rugs that she used as examples for our class, so I didn't take new photos of them. She also had several portrait mats, and I did photograph a couple of them.