My puppy’s name isn’t just Banksy, it’s Challenger’s Forest Banksy. That’s a lot of name, a lengthy name befitting a dog with such a tremendously grande tail as she. We have it on a pedigree paper now, a long piece of paper listing all her grandma and grandpa dogs and so forth. The paper is longer than a regular piece of paper, but not as long as her tail. Her tail doesn’t seem to stop growing, it gets fluffier and longer and when she runs it looks like she has an entire raccoon stuffed into her ass.

Since Banksy has jointed us, everything is always puppy puppy puppy. But at 8 months old, she now has moments of dog-ness. She sometimes lays around in the house. You don’t have to think about her all the time on walks. She listens and doesn’t think about jumping off cliffs even if there is a bird in the air. During the whole puppy puppy puppy period, there was no hope for any art projects, no painting could happen, even though her namesake would never let something get in the way of getting paint on walls.

So I just tried a little bit the other day, could she come on an outing when I bring art supplies along in my pack? It seemed so sad to think about Gustavo heading into a such a big, exciting competition this week without any kind of mural in his honor, even if it was just a teensy start of one to be finished at a later date. So Banksy had her first public art excursion. It’s the dogs’ job to watch for cops or weirdos or wild animals, and let me get on with my work. At the very least, they need to not run off.

It was a little nerve wracking. Being all rusty, I made some rookie mistakes and slopped paint onto my expensive new super supportive old lady trail hiking runner support shoes. I left an incriminating paint pot at the scene of the public art and had to hike a weird double long loop in a hot breeze with panty Ruby all the back round to reclaim it, lest someone trace a dirty, paint filled high end gelato jar back to me. I forgot to wear my hoodie. But Banksy did her job and chilled and we were in and out in a flash. A work is in progress. I think she’s going to work out just fine.