New York Dog Film Festival Rolls Out The Green Carpet!

     Photo credit: Jim Dratfield

Did you ever fantasize about watching dogs, dogs, and well, more dogs, on screen in a theater...all day long? Your desires have become reality, dog lovers! The first New York Dog Film Festival is held today at Symphony Space in Manhattan, and promises "all dogs, all day"—can it get any better?

The Dog Film Festival is the brainchild of Tracie Hotchner, founder of the Radio Pet Lady Network and author of the wildly popular books, The Dog Bible and The Cat Bible, and features forty short films, running from 60 seconds to 30 minutes in two sessions throughout the day.

The festival includes the mini films of humorist Merrill Markoe (of late Night with David Letterman fame), and the artist William Wegman and his Weimaraners. For those of us not able to attend in New York, we can view at least some of the festival's films on YouTube.

We're especially thrilled that the festival also features a segment from an episode of the Shelter Me series on PBS, titled "Second Chances" that shows prisoners training shelter dogs for future work as service dogs.

We can envision a several day, Sundance-like festival starring all dogs, dogs and more dogs (Why not be generous and include a few cats?) as the natural follow-up to this cool festival. What about you?

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Lofty Spaces For Wegman's Weimaraners

Photo of Wegman and his dogs by Brian Harkin for The New York Times

Very few artists ( or anyone else for that matter) have made a tidy living from their dogs, but William Wegman, the king of Weimaraner photography, certainly has done an admirable job. In all fairness, though, Wegman is an accomplished artist in other media, but is most well known for his Weimaraner photography.

This recent New York Times article (complete with slide show) allows us to glimpse the space where Wegman and his two and four-legged brood both live and work: 18,000 square feet, spanning two connected buildings in New York City's Chelsea district. The spaces are apparently extremely "dog friendly" with nary a carpet in sight-and their sofas and chairs are covered in Wegman's own, stain resistant fabric (canine motif, of course).

And his four Weimaraners, Bobbin, Candy, Flo and Topper, have the run of the place. "Their eyes are on me all day long," says Wegman. "I go into the painting studio; they're in there plopped down watching me paint. I'm listening to music in another room and they're listening with me." No wonder they've become his muse!

So how many of you get to live and work with your dogs? For that matter, how many of your dogs are your work? We'd love to know!

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