What is this animal?
Rat, pig, dog, hedgehog, chupacabra, what?
The answer is all of the above. Long a mainstay of Three Star Owl sculptural subjects, this pointy-ended, feisty-looking, toothy mammal has been called all of them. And that would be correct — called a “rαtdog” 
for convenience — it stands for Every Mammal, including us human ones. Rαtdogs represent the Mammalian experience, and are intended to repulse and appeal simultaneously. My hope is that people will want to pick one up, even though it looks like it might bite, or transmit a disease.
Above is the latest rαtdog piece, “FishDog Stack”, fresh from its smoky firing. Like the related piece Toadstack, it’s mainly about heterotrophy: eating other organisms, but only because rαtdogs haven’t figured out how to synthesize cholorophyll yet. FishDog Stack just trundled off to its new home this afternoon, which always makes me happy.
(Photo A.Shock. Currently there’s a detail of FishDog Stack on my Homepage. Also check out an image of an earlier rαtdog piece “Acorn Competition” in the Gallery — click on the third thumbnail at the bottom.)
What an incredible piece, A. One of my all-time favorites.
Thanks, K. These little buggers are strangely hard to photo, though — there’s never one good view of all 3 critters, so I settled for 2 out of 3…
[…] work from Allison Shock. She talks about it in her journal, where you can see a shot of the full piece. Allison is one of the people coming to class in […]
Wow, Allison what a great piece. For me their much more pleasant looking in their way than a rat any day! Take care you art fool you!