Major painting. Still image from the Matthew Gunby video. image:31634:0::0

The three canines have produced abstract paintings which sell for as much as $350 and their greeting card line has already sold out. Their creations have (dog)gone on display in the gallery of a local university and the dogs have even given live demonstrations of their painting techniques.

All three dogs have come a very long way from being the abused and or abandoned animals they were before Mary Stadelbacher came into their lives. Mary turned a lifelong passion for animals into a business enterprise.

It began when Mary developed health problems that resulted in mobility limitations. At that time, she had her dog Major, an abused stray who had showed up in her backyard. Through time, patience and Mary's love, Major overcame his traumatic past. Mary trained Major to help her with the things she could no longer do because of her health issues. This led her to eventually launch Shore Service Dogs to aid people with limited mobility like herself in doing things such as taking the laundry out of the dryer, closing car doors or helping them out of a chair.

In need of funds for her academy, Mary came up with the idea of teaching Major and the two other dogs she had acquired (Sammy and Kahn) how to paint.

Mary wanted her dogs to more than paint with their paws like other dogs, she wanted them to be able to handle a brush like a real artist. So she embedded rubber mouthpieces resembling doggie bones into the brushes. This also served to prevent the brushes from sliding back into the throats of the dogs when they pressed brush to canvas. After two months of training, all three dogs could capably hold brushes in their mouths, carry them back and forth and apply paint to canvas with them. They also know to confine the painting to the canvas and not anything or everything else.

According to Mary, the dogs have a blast painting and it shows in their art. Their paintings are colorful abstracts, happy and free-spirited, though each doggie da Vinci seems to have his own particular style. Major's are said to be the busiest with numerous colorful brush strokes. Kahn is from the bold but minimalist school and Sammy tends to restrict his brush strokes to either the vertical or the horizontal.

Each work of art is "personally signed" by the artist who leaves his paw print at the bottom right hand corner. One of Major's creations can be viewed here while you can see one of Kayne's "mutt-sterpieces" here.

The multi-talented trio are also therapy dogs who can understand commands in English or German. Perhaps as artists, they heeded the old adage "don't give up your day job."