Sailor is a rescue pup from the Navajo Reservation. He was unwanted and got turned in to a high kill shelter on 1/25/2014 in Gallup, New Mexico under the name of Champ. The clock was against him while in this shelter. Luckily an animal adoption group named United Animal Friends out of Prescott, Arizona stepped in and rescued him quickly. He was placed in a foster home when he arrived in Prescott on 2/10/2014. His foster parent Jane said he was very shut down and shy upon arrival. He went on to have two more foster parents while being up for adoption but he showed poorly at all the rescue events. Lynn who helped me adopt Sailor emailed me this recently, “I really don't know why it took so long for him to get adopted! Feb-Sept is a long time. But with some dogs there is no rhyme or reason and he was one of them. I guess he was just waiting for you!” 

Sailor and I have traveled all over the west from New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Idaho and California over the last twelve years. My camera has been the key witness for my eternal love of him. His spirit of joy, pride, courage and gentleness are reflected in these works.  Come celebrate Sailor for the inaugural exhibition at my new location. -Pascal

“What is it about humans and dogs….our loppy, messy, 4-pawed, big hearted evolutionary companions, that is a recipe for joy? I reckon Sailor, a boy with a seafarer’s heart (albeit with his head out the window of a Japanese auto), navigating by nose, calibrating lunar distance, knows some things about the North American west.
He sets me daydreaming about the shared landscape across California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon….a kind of visual vocabulary of smells: the chaparral plants, the Jeffrey pine, mule fat and laurel sumac, crushed grapes and California everlasting. The juniper berries and sagebrush, mesquite bosques, roasting poblanos and creosote after rain, groves of quaking aspen and sulfur springs, campfires and evergreen humus, the crisp crystals of freshly fallen snow…. North and east, south and west….up, down, and around again, like a stone spinner, tumbled until smooth, leading us all the way, right down into the bedrock of our own interior wilderness.”

Steady as he goes. We love you Sailor.

- Sarah Brunnier