Georgia O’Keeffe and her chow dogs

When Mary Grether arrived in Abiquiu to begin working for Georgia O’Keeffe in October 1974, she was greeted by the artist’s two chow dogs. Inca was a black male, the younger of the two. Jingo was a cinnamon, peach-colored female. Their barks, she recorded in her journal, were deep and throaty.

Mary was 23, with a recent art degree from Berkeley, and O’Keeffe was 86. The artist had recently fallen and dislocated her left shoulder, so she needed extra help during her recovery. For two years Mary worked nights and weekends, initially helping with shoulder exercises, bathing, dressing, and the like. As O’Keeffe’s health improved, Mary also typed letters, helped with manuscripts, cooked and cleaned up in the kitchen, and did some driving. That included chauffeuring the dogs to the vet.

The pair of chows was a constant throughout Mary’s time with the artist, and she vividly describes them in a book she’s written based on her journals. Glimpses of an Artist’s Heart: Journal Excerpts from My Time with Georgia O’Keeffe is in the process of finding a publisher.

In the meantime, Mary – now Mary Ligon — generously agreed to share a sneak peak of the manuscript. And I thought it would be fun to learn more about O’Keeffe’s beloved dogs.

This is how Mary describes them:
“They had inscrutable, self-assured expressions and heads like a creature that was a cross between a lion and a bear. Miss O’Keeffe referred to them fondly as ‘The People,’ perhaps because they each had a distinct personality much like people do. They also sat very properly in O’Keeffe’s cars when they were taken places – sitting upright on the seat in a dignified fashion. She had had a series of chow dogs with an intimidating, throaty, low bark. I was accepted by them as part of the O’Keeffe household, and it didn’t hurt that I fed them on weekends (when Steven [Name, O’Keeffe’s longtime gardener] was off).”

“One thing of note about the chow dogs is that Miss O’Keeffe had Steven brush and groom them. He was to save the undercoat that he brushed off. This was sterilized, then made into yarn and woven into a shawl by someone O’Keeffe knew. There were a number of weavers living in the area. It was the softest shawl I have ever touched!”

O’Keeffe had a long succession of chows. At one point Mary was helping her with a “dog manuscript,” in which she recounted all the chows she’d owned over time. (As far as I know, the manuscript was never published or disseminated, but I’ve put it on my archival “watch” list.)

Sometimes Mary walked with O’Keeffe and the two dogs in the evenings, before supper. On one such outing, she learned how the artist became such a fast walker:

“The air felt cold and moist from a fresh snow that had fallen during the night. Miss O’Keeffe kept up a good pace with her walking stick and her blue tennis shoes, and I remarked about her brisk pace. She said that she’d always had a fast pace. When she went to high school, she walked with her older brother, who was six feet tall and, with his long legs, had a long stride. They had to walk quite a distance to get to school, as I understood it, and to keep up with her brother she had to move fast. I either had to run or learn to take a step – so I learned to take a step.’

Poor Inca seems to have had more than his fair share of misadventures out in the country.

In late August 1975, Inca sprained his ankle while chasing a rabbit in the red hills near the Ghost Ranch house.

“I had noticed one morning there that he was favoring his right rear leg. Afraid a snake might have bitten him, I took him with me back to Abiquiu, from where he could be taken to a vet by someone who was on ‘day duty’ with O’Keeffe (I had been on a night shift with her). Inca returned from the vet with a cast on and with strict instructions that he be confined to a five-foot radius. This meant that he had to be leashed to one location most of the time.”

Another time, Inca came home from a late evening walk “with a face full of porcupine quills.” About 40 of them. A dozen of them were pulled out that night, but the rest had to be removed, while tranquilized, at the vet’s the next morning. “Somehow, I got him into the back seat of O’Keeffe’s Mercedes where he sat panting anxiously. I felt sorry for him, but in the big picture I had to chuckle to myself that here I was, chauffeur to O’Keeffe’s quill-infested pedigreed black chow dog sitting like a person on the back seat of a white Mercedes Benz.”