It was roughly a year after we said goodbye to our much-missed border terrier, Sidney, that I finally decided to begin working on my sculpture of him. I had been holding off on starting this project because I knew I would be a harsh critic of myself on this piece, and I was initially worried that I would never be satisfied or happy with the final result. Fortunately, the fact that I knew him so intricately was a strength and not a weakness.

One of the many reasons I love working with bronze is the near permanence of it, and particularly with this piece, that thought fills me with a great sense of joy. The possibility that this sculpture of our beloved Sidney could be around for hundreds, if not thousands of years and hopefully, long after the memories of why I made it are forgotten, people will question what was so important about this particular animal. The opportunity to offer a slice of immortality to something we loved so much was too hard for me to resist.