How do you do. Geoffrey Budd-Landis here. I own ‘Canine Cameos’. I paint dogs. I suppose I’d better expand on that statement. I don’t apply paint to dogs, rather I paint images of dogs, usually in oils, on a canvas for people. Why do I do this when I can’t stand the damned animals? Because it takes no effort. I only work a few hours on at most two days a week, and still it makes an indecent amount of money, some of which is paid in cash. Just in case you were about to ask, naturally I declare every penny of it and pay all the tax too. I know. You weren’t even going to wonder were you?

I preferred painting cats because I like cats, but I had to give it up when I became allergic to them. Anyway a man can feel superior to a dog even if the owner is stinking rich with more money than sense. Actually, I think I’ll rephrase that. Especially, if the owner is stinking rich with more money than sense. No one can feel superior to the even the scabbiest of alley cats as they can still manage to look down on you from five feet below your eyes. I’ve heard cats were worshipped in ancient Egypt. It’s obvious every single one of them is born knowing that and believing that nothing has changed. And don’t get me started on the owners of Siamese, Burmese and other exotics. The cats are all right, but their owners, you wouldn’t believe it. Arrogance incarnate, you’d think they were descended from Bast herself.

I took it upon myself to inform one woman once that Bast the cat goddess was not only the Egyptian goddess of cats, secrets, warfare, healing, ointments, protection, the home, the hearth, fire and the dawn, but of cosmetics, dance, song and festivals too and purely as a side line she looked after anything to do with joy, pleasure, love, women, sex, fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood and family, all of which I’d read somewhere on the internet.

I have to admit telling her that was a mistake, talk about the battle of the sexes. Ok admit it, I lost. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy sex as much as the next man, and she was devastatingly good looking, and strong. Gods was she strong, what a grip! Eight times the first night, and it was four days before I escaped naked out of her upper floor boudoir window when she went to take a pee. It took me two days to get home without being seen, and it was a month before I could pee like a man. I was so sore I was sitting down to avoid the pain of touching myself. Still, at least I was single and didn’t have to account for the blood and the pain. It put a new slant on ‘she wore me out’ that’s for sure. I swore never again more than thrice well, four at most if pressed.

I tried painting people for a while, but they just won’t pay the money they will for a portrait of their beloved pooch. From my point of view the uglier the dog the better because the uglier it is the more they’ll pay me to make it look good and still be recognisable as their darling Fido. I can get five times as much for painting a bulldog or a pug that I can for a retriever or a collie, and they don’t smell any worse. Idiots that keep savage dogs are even more lucrative. I refuse to let the damn thing anywhere near me, take some photos with the owner restraining it on a leash, over a fence or through a cage if need be, and use the photos to paint from. As long as its near enough right and doesn’t look savage the owners will pay a fortune for what I admit is a third rate piece of work at best.

Just an observation. You must know they, the ubiquitous they, say that owners and their dogs grow to be alike, well all my experience is entirely in agreement with that. Ugly dogs have ugly owners, oh they may look all right on the outside, but their minds are always ugly. Aggressive dogs have aggressive owners, and it’s just the same with nondescript dogs, their negative personality owner leaves the room and you feel like somebody just came in, the archetypal nebbish. As for exceptionally smelly dogs their owners have obviously never heard of soap, antiperspirant nor cologne. Like I said, just an observation.

Horses are ok, but most people prefer photographs of darling little Samantha with her short legs desperately trying to go round a fat, bad tempered, Shetland pony. They just don’t get it! If Samantha is strong enough to control the beast she’s heavy enough to break its back, and if she’s light enough not to break its back there’s no way she’s strong enough to control it. Either way is a recipe for disaster. The only person who made a socially acceptable living out of posing pre-pubescent girls and horses in the same tableaux was Norman Thelwell the Cartoonist who caricatured them riding Shetland ponies, and he made a lot more money than I do. The only time I ever made anything out of painting horses was in Yorkshire, painting brewery shire horses. Massive, gentle and lovely creatures, a truly enjoyable job, but it only came up the once.

I have a theory about why older girls and grown women ride, and it’s no accident the word ride itself is a double entendre. Just think it through, girls old enough to be aware of their femininity and how to use it, even if they are only allowing themselves to do so for the while, on a horse with all that muscular power flexing and in constant motion directly underneath that femininity I just referred to. It stands to reason don’t it? With out putting too fine a point on it they ride because they really enjoy it. They can enjoy it over and over again all day long and in public too. Nobody even stops to wonder why they’re smiling.

Christ my mate Jennifer, she used to be Henry, took up riding after SRS, and after twelve months she damn near took out a second mortgage to buy her own. A bloody, great, big stallion. I swear she gets her rocks off just looking at the thing! And then she climbs on its back ‘for a nice long ride, Geoffrey’. That’s why men don’t bother, who wants to feel that inadequate? Not me that’s for sure. I was quite proud of myself till I saw that.

Anyway back to painting, in this area which is hunting territory, the Quorn kennel the hounds just a few miles down road, the business of painting proper horses has been tied up by three artists already, so I paint dogs. Even more so than with people they have to look attractive and lets be honest as I said a lot of dogs are as ugly as sin, so a painting does it better than a photograph, eat your heart out photo-shop. Having said that, photo-shop is a useful tool. It saves me hours. I can take photos and adjust them till I get a selection of images to present to the client for a final decision as to what’s required, and paint just that one. Once I discovered how to do that it meant a commission took about ten percent of the time to complete that it had done before, saved a fortune on materials and it cost the client just the same. Not all technology is bad.

But I’ve got to go now. I’m on my way to see the Bast lady. She wants a series of intimate nudes of herself to exhibit in her private salon. It shouldn’t take more than ten days, say a fortnight to be on the safe side. I know I said never again, but the price, like her charming self, was very attractive. She said she has a small number of friends, no more than two or three dozen, possibly four, she said, who are interested in quality paintings of that type for private viewing too. Life is tough, so it’s just as well my allergy to cats has died down because it looks like I’m going to be painting les chattes for a living for some considerable time. Bye bye dogs. I suppose I can change the business’ name. ‘Pussy Portfolios’ has a certain sort of a cachet about it don’t you think?