Homebody’s Hi-Fi Halloween: Posing My Dog as Nipper

When it became clear that I wasn’t going to be hitting the Halloween parties this year, I was still eager to participate somehow in the ritual. I decided to let a season of quiet isolation at home intersect with fulfilling a longtime ambition: posing my dog, Winter, as Nipper, the RCA dog made famous in the Francis Barraud painting “His Master’s Voice,” which was used promotionally first by the Victor Talking Machine Company, and then by its acquirer Radio Corporation of America. Words and Photos by Nan Pincus Let me give a little background on Winter first. When I finished graduate school in 2016, I felt like a grown up who was ready to adopt a dog from a shelter or rescue and give her a loving home in exchange for the steady companionship, knowing looks, and forced stability of habits that a dog requires. I ended up adopting Winter when she was four months old and fairly quickly I realized that despite not having any fox terrier ancestry, she had a great resemblance to Nipper. Winter is a fairly typical dog, partial to chamber music, squirrel watching, and rambling through the woods with me, her foolhardy human. She prefers […]