I am not a dog person.

I’ve never been comfortable with dogs or known how to interact with them and I’m always a little scared of them. However back when my art business cratered in the Great Recession and I went back to work as a barista, I worked at Wicked Grounds. And the puppyplay munches held there transformed my experience of dogs.

I learned to play with human puppies, how to scratch them and throw things for them and yell “Good DOG!”.

Many of the puppies were over 200 pounds, and as they frolicked in the back seating area (we moved the chairs and tables out) they made the old floorboards creak. Their joy and exuberance was so delightful to me.

So when I was at Folsom Europe this year, I really wanted to spend some time with puppies!

Luckily my friend Sadie Lune and her partner Jo were there, dressed as amazing Autumn Leather Goddesses, and Sadie told me where to go.

“There is a puppy play area where you can see puppies at play and at rest”, she said with great warmth and affection. And I went there and played with pups and skritched their heads and drew them and they were SO WONDERFUL.

So curious, so alert, watching me draw with great interest, ears cocked.

The puppies in the first picture above were in the play area and were wonderfully friendly and well trained.

Usually human puppies are much better trained than animal puppies, and I’ve rarely had a human puppy jump up, which scares me. Here in Germany the dogs are generally well-trained, whether human or animal, and I feel very safe around them.

The pups in the second picture were more aloof, maybe they were sporting dogs of some kind? They had those sleek racing stripes!

Obviously, Morgan doesn’t like dogs of any kind, so she had to display her dominance over the works in progress!

You can learn more about Smarty the Pup and his adventures here!