delight
A dog fountain came to Ohio, one bone at a time
They went to see one fountain. They came home to build another.
A fountain crowded with painted cast-aluminum dogs now sits at the center of South Main Plaza in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, watched over by a cat, a pony, two pairs of birds, and, for reasons no one has explained, an apple. At the middle is a golden bone. The cat, smart enough to know better, stays perched out of the spray. It began when Gambier resident Phil Samuell saw photos of a dog fountain in Toronto's Berczy Park, designed by landscape architect Claude Cormier. He liked it enough that he and his wife, Mary, drove up with their golden retriever, Sandy, to meet Cormier and see the real thing. The trip got the idea rolling. The Ohio version does not take itself seriously. It is a pile of dogs caught mid-splash around a bone, and people now linger, trying to find every animal hidden in the water. The apple keeps its own counsel.