Ten Years In: An Artist Reflects on Shelter Dogs and the New Normal

Blossom by Sophie Gamand

As I think about the past year, I’m struck by the similarities between our “new normal” and the life of shelter dogs. We, too, have been uprooted from our routines and asked to comply with new, sometimes scary rules that don’t always make sense, while huge unknowns loom over us. We, too, have become   trapped in our own safe space, desperately trying to maintain our dignity as the world around us goes crazy.

Shelter dogs are amazing, incredibly patient creatures. Their most powerful skill is the ability to remain flexible and open to new lessons every day. Some have a harder time than others, granted, but they all have in common resilience, an appetite for life and love, and an uncrushable capacity to forgive and trust again. 

They make it look so easy, don’t they? 

This year will mark a decade since I decided to dedicate my art to helping shelter dogs. I’ve served as their voice and their witness, helping them find homes through my images. I’ve connected with thousands of dogs throughout the country.

My Pit Bull Flower Power project, in particular, took me on a totally unexpected journey with some recent twists. Since 2014, I’ve made free photographic portraits of about 450 shelter Pit Bulls around the U.S., crowning them with flowers to transform their public image. Many of these dogs had been waiting for homes for years, but by celebrating their inherent personalities, vulnerabilities, and individualities, hundreds were able to find loving, forever homes.

Some of my earlier canine models are now aging. Those I follow on social media grow a bit grayer every year. Occasionally, I receive an update from an adopter, and it’s an emotional, hopeful walk down memory lane, as I flip through photographs of a former shelter dog now doing well in his or her new life. 

Sadly, I’ve also seen some of my models returned to the shelter, swallowed up by the human machine and spat back out. Blossom, one of my favorite models and an amazing dog, was returned four times in the six years I’ve known her (she’s had terrifyingly bad luck, coupled with a widespread prejudice against Pit Bulls). Blossom was surrendered to the shelter for the last time early in the pandemic, right as the world was shutting down, but I managed to squeeze in a photoshoot with her, just before the shelter went on full lockdown. She is the only one of my former flower models I’ve had the chance to photograph so many years apart, first in 2014, then 2020. 

Blossom is now terminally ill, and she may not have much time left. Thankfully, my friend, Julie, has volunteered to foster her, and together we’ve vowed that Blossom will never again see the inside of a cage. While Blossom did not have a traditional happy ending with a forever home, perhaps her true family was the rescue family after all. She will stay with Julie until the end. 

Fortunately, I have witnessed many more happy stories, beautiful endings with dogs who find true forever homes, sometimes after they’ve waited years at the shelter. I am always amazed by how quickly these dogs adjust, eager to love and be loved. 

With shelters closed to outsiders during the pandemic, I’ve lately been working from behind the computer, pulling old photos and working to place dogs who have been waiting a long time. Recently, I was able to help three such dogs, each of whom had been waiting to be adopted for seven years. The last one, Roger, wound up living a few blocks away from me - a rare occurrence. I was able to meet him again, all these years after I first photographed him, and celebrate this new exciting chapter  in his life. 

I remember being so nervous for Roger. How would he handle the change from a rural Alabama shelter where he’d lived for years to apartment living in Brooklyn? And how would he act with the family’s pet birds in the living room?

The day Roger traveled from Alabama to New York, I was on the edge of my seat. Roger arrived and  covered his new family with kisses. He took one look at the birds and rolled on his back, wriggling with pleasure all over his new rug. 

Roger was home. And it didn’t even take him 24 hours to adjust to his new normal.