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"View Slideshow\n\nNo one who owns a dog\u2014and in America alone more than 70 million of us do\u2014has not at one time or another reflected ruefully on the wildly divergent longevities enjoyed by dogs and people. One day the former are in their sturdy prime; the next, their muzzles have gone frosty and the imminence of valediction wells up in us (this writer, for one, has been predeceased by seven dogs\u2014namely Ego, Pip, Jasper, Magnus, Ned, Rory and James).\n\nWe all seek ways to make these bitter bereavements bearable. Artist Stephen Huneck, who has captured the essence of our better halves in his life-size sculptures, best-selling children's books, whimsical hand-carved furniture and vibrantly original, robustly graphic woodcuts, is possessed of the conviction that dogs have spiritual as well as corporeal identities and that they go on, outside the course of nature, beyond what we can see.\n\nAfter a near-death experience in the 1990s, Huneck had what he calls a vision. It guided him to build an unearthly, unprecedented and most unexpected thing: a dog chapel. And where else but on his 400-acre northern Vermont farm, an Edenic realm of pastures, forests, ponds and wildflower fields that he had long since christened Dog Mountain.\n\nThe chapel, as he came to envision it, would be a place \"you could go to communicate with God about your dog\"\u2014not only to mourn the actual or impending loss but to contemplate and commemorate the dimensions of the human-canine relationship. And dogs themselves, in their immutable virtue (\"incapable of deceit,\" all dogs ring true), would be a big part of the congregation. Normally, when one visited a house of worship, one left one's dog at home; here, however, one would look wanting, and feel almost criminally out of place, if one didn't have a dog at hand.\n\nHuneck drew up the plans with an air of resilient purpose: He knew exactly what he wanted the building to look like\u2014an early-19th-century white-clapboard-clad Vermont village church. He was further bent on using wood harvested from the property\u2014walnut, tiger maple and first-growth flame birch\u2014plus sassafras, with its inimitable scent, for the floors. But since the project was going to have to be funded by sales of his art, he could work on it only between commissions. \"I took any downtime I had and put it into that chapel,\" he confesses. It opened in 2000 and now never closes.\n\nTraditional 19th-century churches often had two doors, one for women and one for men, but with his the artist took the tonic liberty of adding a low center portal, with matching raised panels and carved fan above: Lo and behold, a dedicated dog door! And he topped the steeple with one of his \"angel dogs\"\u2014a full-bodied sculpture, winged and gilded, of his Labrador retriever Sally.\n\nInside, the chapel consists of a decorous foyer and a 30-by-20-foot main room with a 16-foot vaulted ceiling. The four hand-carved pews are buttressed at either end by life-size carvings of seated golden retrievers, which, according to Huneck, have been mistaken, by the odd dog scudding across the floor, for the real thing. The stained-glass windows he obtained from a friend came adorned with obligatory religious motifs; these he went on to meticulously replace with dog images of his own invention. \"They illustrate love, joy, friendship, play, trust, faith and peace\u2014all the things that dogs have taught me,\" he explains.\n\nPhotographs and written tributes almost beyond number (in places they're several layers deep)\u2014not to mention a vestigial lock of silken dog hair\u2014grace the walls and will soon ensorcell the ceiling. One note reads: \"We brought Silas with us to remember beloved Septimus.\" Another: \"For Bellamy, our first best hairiest friend.\" And another, startlingly: \"Dear Gina, that moment when you snapped at Dad, you spoke up for all of us and made us free.\" The visiting dogs, Huneck insists, are \"totally moved by all the vibrations.\"\n\nThough the chapel remains by far his largest work of art, its creator sees it\u2014tenacious champion of canine immortality that he is\u2014as his most incommensurable."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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