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Adrian Tomine is one of my favourite modern artists.
If you’ve seen the New Yorker, you’ve encountered his work; he has created some incredible covers for the magazine inspired by daily life in New York City. My husband and I have all of his books, as well as one of his prints.
For the April 28, 2025, issue, he created a cover called Lucky Dogs that has stuck with me since I saw him teasing out preliminary sketches on Instagram. There are 17 pups, by my count, of all different breeds at a park. Their tongues are hanging out. They are chasing tennis balls, sticks, each other. Some are crouched in play. In the extreme foreground, there’s a close-up of a panting Bichon Frise, its eyes half closed in that satisfied way that will be familiar to dog owners. These dogs are living their best lives.
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Contrast that to the humans on the page. Most of them are looking down, not at their best friends, but at their phones. Many of them have faces drawn in worry and consternation. In the distance, a dog stands in front of its person. The person’s back is to us, but you can tell he’s not looking at his dog, who is waiting, waiting, waiting for him to throw the ball, waiting for him to notice.
The cover was inspired by Tomine’s daily early-morning walks in Prospect Park in New York City.
“I often find myself in the midst of ‘off-leash hours’ near the Picnic House,” Tomine told the New Yorker. “Sometimes the oblivious, unbridled joy of all those dogs is an amazing mood-lifter, and sometimes — especially lately — it fills me with an irrational mix of annoyance and envy.”
Art is great because I had a totally different take on this drawing! Dogs — the lucky dogs of Tomine’s piece, anyway — have few worries, it’s true. They don’t have to think about tariffs or war or their own mortality. They experience joy in a way that is completely in their bodies, completely in the moment.
But they are great teachers, dogs. The pups in Tomine’s piece are trying to show us that it is possible for us to do that, too: that it is possible for us to feel that kind of oblivious, unbridled joy. If only we could get off our phones.
Unbridled joy, for me at least, means undistracted joy. But I see this human behaviour on dog walks all the time, people so absorbed in their phones that they don’t see their dogs straining at leashes trying to sniff something, or lunging at something or once, rather heartbreakingly, trying to stop to poop.
I remember walking my late dog Samson in Assiniboine Park sometime last year, which would be the last year of his life. It was a gorgeous day. But dystopian, too. Everyone’s necks were craned, looking down at their phones. Not at their dogs. Not at the beautiful day. They were somewhere else completely.
I don’t take my phone when I walk Phoebe, just as I didn’t take it when I walked her brother. I like watching her pick up sticks and scamp after squirrels and being aware of her safety so I can tell her to “leave it!” when she tries to scoop up a full orange Bic lighter from a construction site in the soft folds of her mouth. This is my time with her, and there’s only so much of it. She deserves me to be there — really be there — with her.
Dogs ask so little of us, you know?
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