"My Private Idaho" a Idaho Travel Page by Richmond

Is it any surprise that so much of America's great art can be seen from the window of a passing car, in the melange of shop signs, billboards and cheesy buildings, in the personal monuments people make in their gardens and empty lots, on the makeshift, lean-to margins where artistic preconceptions and ambitions don't exist?

I did a road trip to Northern Idaho and was attracted to the Giant Dogs being created In on the edge of the highway near Cottonwood, ID (between Lewiston and Grangeville)
According to a story in the Lewiston (ID) Morning Tribune, Dennis Sullivan is creating a giant dog which will one day be opened as a one-room motel, or bed and breakfast. The 35-foot-tall dog has been under construction for three years, but won't be ready for decades, according to Sullivan.
When complete, the dog will sleep six -- four in the main body and two in the head (which is the loft). A bathroom will take up the rear portion of the dog and stairs will be built for easier access than the ladder now in use. The dog overlooks US Highway 95 at the Cottonwood junction.

When Dennis and his wife Frances opened Dog Bark Park --- Frances paints dogs, Dennis carves them -- they didn't anticipate the stir created by the carved wood beagle named Toby, who at 12 feet tall stands guard over the business.

After getting the idea, Sullivan set out drawing plans for the unit, named Sweet Willy Colton. Having worked 25 years in the building industry, he was no stranger to construction. But, he couldn't get the curves and lines inside the dog figured out. "I couldn't see inside this dog's head," he says. So he built a scale model of the canine and in 1999 poured the footing that would support the beast.

But the process has been a slow one, since work still comes first. Dennis has used QVC to sell 10,000 carved dogs over one 16 month period. And the Sullivans are currently finishing a 156-dog project, which were used as trophies in the Burmese Dog Show in 2001.