There’s a bronze dog on the corner of Second and Madison in Corvallis. Her name is Cassie. The plaque says “Cassie – 2003 – Sue McNiel Jacobsen.”
I don’t know who the real Cassie was, or why someone decided she should be remembered in bronze. There’s no obituary, no photograph, no plaque explaining her life, and no story attached to the statue that I’ve been able to find. Whatever the reason, somebody wanted a dog statue named Cassie sitting on a downtown corner, and that is where she has been ever since.
Her body is dark bronze, with the weathered patina that happens over time, but her head has worn down to shiny gold from twenty-three years of townsfolk petting her on their way past. Students pet her between classes, parents pet her while herding kids toward the crosswalk. People on their way to work pet her, and so do people on their way home from the bar, perhaps with slightly worse aim and a little more enthusiasm.
It’s not planned. You’re just walking, then you see the sweet doggie who appears to wear a small smile, and suddenly your hand’s on her head and you’re already saying the thing everybody says as they pass.
“Good girl, Cassie.”
She was sculpted by Sue McNiel Jacobsen, a bronze artist from Idaho, and installed downtown in 2003 as part of a public art push meant to make Second Street feel like a nice place to walk and enjoy the scenery, instead of just a route between the bank and the riverfront. Most public statues get placed high and facing the street, angled for whoever’s driving past. Cassie faces the sidewalk instead, towards the people walking by.
The water bowl at her feet came four years after she was installed, added specifically so real dogs could drink out of it. The bowl fills every time it rains. During the warm part of the year, passersby pick flowers off the corner bed and tuck them behind Cassie’s ears, or balance one right on top of her head like a crown. It happens as naturally as petting her head, a tiny tradition nobody organized.
I found no account of the real Cassie or what she did to earn a bronze likeness of herself on a downtown corner. Perhaps that doesn’t matter, though. The people who stop to pat her head aren’t thinking much about the biography of the dog she was based on, they’re thinking about the bronze dog in front of them, sitting there being a very good girl.
Real dogs treat her like she’s one of their own. They walk straight up to her, no hesitation, tails wagging like they’ve met her a hundred times, which, depending on the dog, they may have. My own tiny dog, Virgil, won’t let me pass by without giving him a chance to say hello, which has been true since he was eight weeks old. If I try to refuse him because I’m in a hurry, he lets out plaintive wails until I stop and let him kiss the statue he clearly sees as his friend.
People are a little more self-conscious about it, but not by much. I’ve watched grown men in work boots detour off their route just to get a hand on her head. I’ve watched teenagers do it while pretending they weren’t going to.
“Good girl, Cassie.”
Nobody’s teaching a lesson by patting a bronze dog, no point is being made. It’s just a lot of people, on a lot of different days, who’ve all separately decided a statue shaped like a good dog deserves to be treated like one. It’s a little ritual that shows off the gentleness of Corvallis.
Cassie happily receives all of it. The rain, the hands, the same four words on repeat for over twenty years now, facing the sidewalk instead of the street, facing the people instead of the traffic.
I’m sure somebody will pick another flower for her by the end of the week. Maybe this time it will be me.
