Baxter had no idea he was about to become famous.
He is 8 years old, a Havanese and Poodle mix, and that weekend he only wanted to go for a walk around Jack Poole Plaza in Vancouver while visiting the city with his owner, Katie Mason Ferley, and her husband, who had traveled from Portland. In front of them stood the Digital Orca, a sculpture made of black and white cubes that artist Douglas Coupland installed there in 2009. Katie immediately noticed the resemblance: the orca’s pose, with its fin raised, was almost identical to the way Baxter stood on two legs to ask for treats.
Her husband had the idea: he pretended to hold a treat in the air so that Baxter would stand up at just the right moment. The result was such a perfect photo that it looks like it was created in Photoshop, but it wasn’t. An 8-year-old dog and a steel work of art sharing the same pose, as if fate had saved that moment for them.