For the fifteen or more years Frida lived with me, this is where she was most of the time, checking out the neighborhood and occasionally barking at someone who didn’t belong there.

When Frida died, I had a sculpture of her installed on the roof dome.

And Frida’s ashes went into this effigy which we concreted in place on her favorite place on the dome, to watch for as long as I have any say in the matter.

Keep a watch for us, girl .

And then, across the street on the corner of Ilie Nastase and Wm. Tilden, these puppy-sized sculptures appeared.

As new real puppies joined the family, I installed a gate to keep less experienced little feet off the dome, but inevitably, guests or Pasiano would leave the gate on the stairs up to the casita whose terrace adjoined the dome.

Neighbors snapped this photo, then called to advise me that Frida had visitors.

A year or so later, another member of the pack appeared right across from me on Wm. Tilden

Help Frida keep watch, boy!

(Frida as a puppy.)

It all started with Frida, who I first met as she trotted down the carretera traveling west as I walked with my friend Joe, going east.  She was so tiny that I thought she was a big rat at first, but as she drew nearer, I realized it was a tiny puppy who, when she got up to me, immediately stopped and looked up at me with those eyes that indicated that we already belonged to each other.  When she got older, for the next 15 years or so, she spent most of her days up on the dome of my house supervising the neighborhood, and when she passed away, it didn’t take long for me to figure out how she should be memorialized. It took me some months to find a terracotta sculpture that looked like her and to find men to concrete it securely in place.  Inside are Frida’s ashes.  There she has resided for years, surveying all who pass as she did during her life.

As new dogs arrived in my life, they took to occasionally visiting her on the roof, and then a strange thing happened.  In the house kitty-corner across from me, two smaller terracotta dogs appeared, on the post beside the entry gate, Frida directly in their line of vision a story above them on my dome.

Then, less that a year ago, the house directly across the street from me sold, and a few days ago, when Yolanda mentioned my neighbors putting dogs on their roof, I corrected her that they were on a pedestal by their front gate, but she said, no–on the roof–and directed me down the street to look back at the house of the new neighbors.  There, securely affixed to their chimney stack, almost obscured by the trees, was another Frida!

That is how “In the doghouse” came to be a non-derogatory term in my neighborhood. In fact, I am now just waiting for the next roof dog to show up!!