Norman Rockwell loved dogs, as pets and as subjects in his artwork.
Norman Rockwell was an American painter and illustrator. Many of his illustrations depicting real-life scenes appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post for almost 50 years. He would use his own dogs and neighbors' dogs as models - a photographer would capture the dog's pose for Rockwell to draw.
"Obtaining good photographs of animals for use in pictures is quite a test of your photography or, in my case, my photographer... The person taking the photographs must be extremely quick and ingenious because an animal may assume the pose you want for only a split second and you must be ready to snap the photograph at that unpredictable moment. I hold the animal where I hope he will assume the desired pose and my photographer focuses on him. Then I try to induce the model to take the desired pose. When he does I yell at the photographer to shoot. Sometimes the result is a blurred picture but other times I am lucky."
Rockwell's own dogs would accompany him to the studio and lay alongside him as he worked. On one occasion, he had to go to Europe and leave his collie Raleigh behind. The dog missed him so much - he lost a lot of weight, his health deteriorated and his whiskers turned white. The veterinarian surely thought he would die. When Rockwell returned, he hand-fed Raleigh every two hours. The dog put on weight and perked up but his whiskers remained white. Rockwell told Raleigh he would never leave him alone again if he would let his whiskers get back to their natural color. After a few weeks, his whiskers were dark again, and Rockwell never left him alone again.