I have come to the conclusion that I will never, ever finish putting all the hair on this dog. It’s 2:30 a.m. I have to go back tomorrow to put more on. I’ll show you photos later, if I don’t go insane first.

First of all, you should know that I did not pick up the shotguns today. There’s some additional paperwork that I needed, so hopefully that will be taken care of tomorrow. Meanwhile, here’s some of the dog activity. I’m actually farther along than this but I forgot to take pictures.

What you are looking at here is the bottom of the dog’s skull, minus the lower jaw. I’ve run a steel cable in through the hole where the spinal cord goes. Convienently, there are holes from the brain case down into the upper palette which I threaded the cable through and the looped it back to attach it to itself. This will hold the whole thing securely together but also allow flexible movement.

Since this really just has to flop in the way a real dog would, I don’t have to worry too much about getting the balance right for manipulation. I’m doing ultra simple construction for the legs. These are just flat pieces of airplane ply held together by cotter pins. I’ll put stops on them to keep them from hyper-extending and also use the foam itself as a sort of muscle to control their direction of movement.

At the hip, I have a rudimentary pelvis and have attached the legs to the hips with tieline.  They hang nicely but I totally forgot to take a photo.

Part of why I’m being bad with photos is because I’ve already built one wounded dog, so I’m figuring this isn’t covering any new ground for you.  On the other hand, I am building the legs differently this time.  PLUS the covering of this dog will be such a pain that I will document it in full.

Since we have some new readers, let me catch you up a bit. When my bio says that I’m a professional puppeteer, it really means it. So after feeling like a rock star this weekend, I’ve come back to the grind of daily routine, which happens to include building a springer spaniel.

To do that, I use an actual dog skull in order to make sure that I’ve got the dentition right. This one arrived the day before LaunchPad, so I kind of opened the box, went, “Yep, skull” and ignored it.

I pulled it out of the box today, along with the pair of eyeballs that arrived while I was gone. As before, the skull is a beautiful thing and striking in how different it is from the last dog skull. Spaniels have a much more pronounced forehead.

Now… do you see that oblong dark spot in the jaw? That would be a dried dermestid beetle. It’s wedged in a small hole in the bone. There are very few things that wig me out, but maggoty things fall into that category. Now, granted, this is a beetle and has a hard shell. It’s only the shape that is at all maggoty and yet… The notion of trying to pick it out makes my skin feel like a bajillion beetles are going to scuttle across me. Part of me wonders if I can get way with just encasing it in foam and pretending it doesn’t exist, except then, of course, the darn thing would fall out at an unexpected moment.

So there you go! The glamour of puppetry.

I’m only home for fifteen days this month. Yesterday was the only full day that Rob and I will have together until August 11th. He’s leaving to go to Canaan for a film shoot today and returns the 17th, the day that I leave for Readercon. We might overlap that day, but likely not.

I return from Readercon on the 20th, which is the day Rob leaves to go to the IPNC. We won’t overlap that day.

He returns from IPNC on the 30th, which is the day I leave for Launchpad. We might be able to see each other at the airport. I’m not kidding.

Launchpad and Worldcon are back to back and I return on August 11th.

All of which is leading me to think that I should go up to Canaan with Rob today and spend the night. BUT, I have twelve days left this month in which to build a realistic wounded dog puppet¹ On the other hand, I haven’t received the petty cash to purchase supplies yet and if I don’t do that today, then it will be Monday before I can work. Ten days to build a dog. Doable, but only just.

1. This is a side effect of having a dead dog in one’s portfolio [↩]

Okay. You people asked for it. Here are photos of the dead dog I built. This is the initial blood look, working with the idea that the dog has been hit by a car recently. Most animals killed by cars die from broken necks or internal bleeding. There’s very little visible damage.

We needed gore.

Lots and lots of blood. As I mentioned, I did some surgery to the dog and then, right before it goes onstage, they dump stageblood on it so that we get some dripping action. Next up, in small form, are two shots of the damage that might have occurred with multiple car hits. Note the missing leg.

I finished the dog today. Finally. The consensus was that it needed to be gorier, but since I hadn’t built it that way, there were limits to what I could do without rebuilding. For instance, exposed bone wasn’t an option… wait a minute. There’s a real skull in there.

So, I dislocated the jaw and ripped part of her face. I also amputated a leg, and put a blood-soaked sponge in its place. Plus lots and lots and lots of blood. She drips when she comes out of the box now and everyone seems happy.

Today started with me sleeping through my alarm, though waking up in enough time to make the 8:15 train to Saratoga if I hurried. I ran out the door, struggling along with pounds of Shimmer magazines in my backpack, and came down to the steps of the subway station just as the train I needed was arriving. Whew.

And then, in a bonus stroke, when we got to 96th street, the express train magically appeared across the track. I hopped over and started breathing a little easier. I even got a seat.

Then the train stopped in the tunnel.

It crawled forward finally arriving at NY Penn Station at 8:07. Gah! I ran into the building, sweat pouring down under my coat, knowing that I wasn’t going to make it, but having to try. After all, Amtrak had sent an announcement to expect delays. Maybe it was late pulling in to Penn. Sure enough, I checked the board and it was still there. I grabbed my ticket, no line, and turned to the gate.

Which I couldn’t find. Oh, sure… there was a track 5 E, but it was only accessible by an escalator, which was going up. I needed to go down. A station attendant saw me and another man run to 5 E and look panicked. He shouted, “The stairwell behind you. Run! It might still be there.”

I ran. Top of the stairs. Glory be! The train was still there.

At the first landing, the doors shut. Halfway past that, the train pulled forward. I stopped and dropped my bag. The other man did the same thing. Almost in unison, we cursed.

I turned around, lugged my bag upstairs to exchange my ticket for the afternoon train.

That done, I walked back to the red line to go home. A line from the platform wound down into the main terminal. It wasn’t moving and from where I stood, I could see the crowd at the top, filling the platform. Someone said, “Train’s not running.”

“Any of them?”

“Not on this line. An ‘incident’.”

Groaning, I walked back to the other end of the station to take the C train home. As I waited, I watched six E trains come by and a couple of A’s but no C. Finally, an announcement said that they were running “slower than usual due to an earlier incident.”

What’s with all the incidents? After waiting for forty-five minutes, a C finally came, just as I was about to give up.

I got home about 10:30 and collapsed in bed.

Half an hour later, the phone rang. The production had run into a problem and wanted to know what they should do. With a sense of grim irony, I said, “Fortunately, I missed my train this morning. I’m still in town.”

So, I skipped the afternoon train, fixed the intestines and the dead dog and will go to World Fantasy tomorrow. Somewhere in all of this, I’m planning on sleeping more than half an hour.

I’m too fatigued to generate content today, though I still have lovely photos of the dead dog process. Meanwhile, listen to this podcast of The Moon by Jodi Eichelberger and Mark LaPierre.

My skull arrived day before yesterday! I am astonished by how beautiful it is.

I’ve spent the last two days building the dead dog and have process shots for you, but at the moment, you’ll have to content yourself with this one of the skull.

I will tell you that we have dubbed the dog “Flacie,” short for flaccid because she is a limp, dead dog. The build is going extremely well.

I’m just too tired to be coherent with process stuff, but it’s 2 am, so I figure that’s justified.

I’m starting by using a real skull for the dog head. I’d planned on just getting a resin dog palette, but lo! There’s Skulls Unlimited has a giant collection of dog skulls.

Now, I’m not going to be using the Chihuahua skull in this picture, but had to share it with you. Does that not look like an alien? No wonder they so often look creepy.

I ordered a large B-quality domestic dog skull. Once it arrives, I’ll enlarge a picture of a dog’s skeleton to match the skull and use that for my scale rendering. It should be an interesting process.