Titan portrait finished!

Titan's portrait is finished. Here’s what Alicia told me about this amazing, one-of-a-kind Doberman:

“A funny story I like to tell and is remembered by many is Titan’s first container search at a scentwork trial at Durham Kennel Club. When he walked into the building for the first time and stepped into the ring, he completely ignored the two neat rows of white boxes and made a beeline for the wall of mirrors. After tilting his head this way and that, he began admiring the incredibly handsome dog staring back at him and pacing back and forth to make sure every angle looked good. The admiration ended only when the spectators started to snicker and laughter. He rushed over to his new fan club to strut his stuff. The search itself never stood a chance between him checking himself out and his adoring fans.

That was the theme for the majority of his scentwork career. He’d strut out of a search area looking so proud of himself, and I’d be grinning or laughing so hard that people assumed we’d absolutely crushed it. They’d congratulate us on our “amazing search,”. I would just laugh with a thumbs down leaving them wondering how an NQ [non qualification] could be funny.”

Alicia had always described Titan as

“cheerful, goofy, and just a bit mischievous".

Then she told me this incredible story about the reference photo this portrait is based on:

“The photo was taken in May 2024, at a Comfort Inn in Blacksburg, VA the night before an AKC Scentwork trial, the last for the season. I was hanging out on the bed playing with his tug, enjoying himself as you can see by the look on his face. The next day we were at a camp doing a master interior search when he got shocked by a wall outlet with a broken cover, he screamed and it dropped him to the ground and he didn’t move for what felt like a long time when he finally crawled to me. It was in the 3rd and final room of a Master level search which would have been his title. He was really shaken but rallied for me and we were able to do some exterior searches and buried that weekend and he was his happy self as long as we were not going into any buildings other than the hotel. It took several months of hard work to get him to not have an aversion to going into unfamiliar rooms as a result of the shock, during which time we also started the immune suppression to resolve the immunity issue he developed. He had a lot of health challenges with the treatment and we thought we were on our way back. The week before he died he earned his Master exterior title which left him only 1 leg short of earning his overall Masters Title, the leg we were missing was the last interior search we ever entered which was the day after that photo was taken.” 

Portrait of Titan: the true heart of a Doberman.

(Goldgrove Irish War Cry CAX FCAT SWNE SWE SCM SEM SBM SHDN WAC RATN CGC TKN ATT NW1)

❤️  Commissioned by Alicia McCarthy. 

🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Sky Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper