Paw Prints on the Body Canvas

Sassafras Lowrey, a genderqueer high femme author, artist, activist and dog lover in New York City, was inspired by our story Indelible Dogs (BARk, Mar/Apr 2008) to share hir tattoos. Ze describes hirself as “a heavily modified individual” with many visible tattoos, three of which specifically relate to hir love and spiritual connection with dogs. (Lowrey self-refers with the gender-neutral pronouns ze and hir.)

Seven paw prints across hir upper right arm “represent a dog who has touched my heart and who my life has been intertwined with," Lowrey writes in an email. On hir calf is an elite agility course map—a memorial to early, difficult years in which dog sports played a significant role in building inner resources. That tattoo is ringed with the words: I could have missed the pain, But I’d of had to miss the dance. Tattooed on Lowrey’s left bicep is a portrait of hir service dog Mercury, a Chihuahua-Doxie mix, transformed into an angel statue/gargoyle.

“For me tattoos and dogs are both very important,” Lowrey writes. “Dogs have and continue to change and guide the way I see the world around me, and tattoos are a medium with which I have used to transform my body by rendering it a canvas upon which I can show different aspects of my life and journey to the world, through these permanent inked monuments to beings and moments.”

Learn more about Lowrey at Pomo Freakshow.

Lisa Wogan