Who is St. Frida Anyway?

Q: Who is St. Frida?
A: For anyone stumbling upon this blog who is not a member of Frida's pack, here are the basics: Frida is a "mixed breed" dog I brought home from the shelter at Angell Memorial in Jamaica Plain when she was six months old--now about eight years ago.

She is not yet a saint, obviously, as she is still alive (a fact very much to our liking). She is known as St. Frida the dog martyr in anticipation of her beatification. Of course, the canonization won't take place w/in the Catholic church, and we're really not sure what church or if any will canonize her. That all remains for the future to tell.

Q: Who made the painting of St. Frida?
A: An artist named William Schaff who is based in Providence, R.I. I believe he has other images you can see on Flickr. He has done many beautiful pieces of dogs, none of them sentimental. In fact, they remind me of German Expressionist work of the early 20th c.


Q: What is it that makes her a future saint?
A: Primarily, her great suffering, which she generally bears stoically but nonetheless communicates with great force and frequency in her expression. In fact, the suffering she expresses is so out of proportion to the conditions of her life--she seems to be enduring a pain much greater than the circumstances of any particular moment would justify--that we assume she knows a pain much beyond her self in time.

Personally, I suspect that Frida suffers for the crimes that humans visit upon dogkind at large. The look on her face is much the same as one you can see on the faces of many stray or abused dogs on many city streets anywhere in the world. I could go into more detail about that, but it's best to leave that for what the book itself has to say. There you will find both the pain and the joy Frida seems to know.


Q: Who are you?
A: Frida's adopter, companion, feeder, walker, and now scribe.

Q: What kind of saint is Frida? Does she have any attributes to identify her?
A: I'd say the most appropriate saint-type to apply to her would be that of the mendicant: she is, like all the canis lupus that became familiaris, very good at begging. She is, I think, also a mystic of some sort. Certainly, there have been times and places when seizures were understood as some kind of mystical experience, and w/o medication Frida would have frequent seizures.

Her attributes, show in the portrait, are her epilepsy medication; the Kong she receives (in a now ritualized fashion) upon being left alone, to lessen her separation anxiety (the fear of abandonment); and the tags, which offer some safeguard against becoming lost.

Q: What is the nature of her faith?
A: This I don't know for certain, and that is part of the purpose of the book of St. Frida: I hope through translating it to flesh out the substance of the "faith" that underlies Frida's future sainthood.

Q: Translate?
A: Yes. As with many books of mystical or spiritual experience, the original language is not English. In fact, Frida's original is not written or even in any human tongue, dead or living. I am transcribing the book from my best understanding of her expression, which is mostly body language; it is a very inexact process. I hope readers will be generous with me, as my comprehension of "dog" is only quite rudimentary, and there is a considerable gap between the semiotics of canine communication and written English.

Nota bene: I have taken as my model a fairly standard biblical English: the New Oxford edition. I was initially drawn to the KJV b/c I most enjoy reading that, but somehow the 17th-c. language didn't seem quite right for Frida. Conversely, the newer, "hipper" teen-speak evangelical bibles that have abandoned verse altogether I just don't like. And that's my prerogative.

Q: Is this a joke?
A: . . . sorry, did you say something? I was busy trying to count the angels on the head of this pin . . .