Why we made this

On the 8th of April 2024 our family drove from Boston up to Vermont to watch the solar eclipse. On the way home we stopped at the Dog Chapel at Dog Mountain, in St. Johnsbury.

The artist Stephen Huneck built it in 2000 and set aside one wall inside where people could leave a note about a dog they had lost. Visitors filled that wall. Then the next one. Today every surface of the building is covered floor to ceiling — photographs, index cards, handwriting, hundreds of thousands of them, thumbtacked in place by people who needed somewhere to put it.

That day, the Dog Chapel rocked us as much as the eclipse.

We left two notes on that wall before we drove home. One for Balki, our Boston Terrier, who had died three years earlier. One for Abbie, who belonged to Jenny, our groomer.

That last line is on Balki's tile today. It went from an index card on a wall in Vermont to a page anyone can reach from anywhere, and that journey is more or less the whole idea.

Because a paper card is perfect and a paper card is fragile. It fades, it falls, eventually the wall runs out of room. We wanted somewhere a dog's memory could persist — in the places they were loved, and online where it does not depend on paper.

How it works

Each tile is an eight-inch portrait of one dog, made from a single photograph, with a small code in the corner. The tile hangs somewhere that dog was known. The code opens their page.

Both halves matter. A wall you can visit is not the same as a page you can read, and neither one on its own is enough.

Where it is today

There is one wall so far. It hangs at Pawsh, our grooming salon in Boston's Back Bay, and Balki and Abbie are both on it — the same two dogs whose cards went up in Vermont.

It is built to travel. Pet stores like Pawsh, vet offices, rescues, anywhere pets are loved and lost.

We have no affiliation with Dog Mountain. We simply owe them the idea, and we would encourage anyone who can get to Vermont to go and stand in that room. dogmt.com