A Personal Reflection on Painting K9 Yoube
There is something a little different about looking back at the painting I did of K9 Yoube.
Yoube was the first dog I painted for Project K-9 Hero, but I want to be careful about saying too much about my part in her story. The truth is, my painting was only a very small piece of a much bigger story.
Yoube meant a lot to a lot of people.
Project K-9 Hero celebrated her in so many ways. There was a song written about her, “That’s Just Yoube,” a 5K held in her honor, and other events and tributes that have continued to keep her memory alive. She became much more than a retired K9. She became much more than a retired K9. She became a dog that brought a lot of people together and gave them another reason to celebrate what these dogs mean to us.
I was just fortunate enough to be able to contribute in my own small way.
What makes the painting especially meaningful to me now is knowing that it was used as Yoube’s portrait when she was interred at the Michigan War Dog Memorial. When I painted her, I never imagined that the artwork would eventually be part of honoring her in that way.
That’s something I think about when I look back at some of the K9 paintings I’ve done. I don’t get to decide what a painting will mean to someone else. I just sit down and try to capture the dog in front of me—the expression, the personality, the things that make that particular dog who they are.
Then I send it out into the world and hope it means something to the people who receive it.
With Yoube, it became part of something much bigger than I ever expected. Her legacy belongs to the people who knew her, loved her, worked with her, and made sure her story would continue to be told.
I’m simply grateful that, for a little part of that story, I got to be the person holding the pen.
K9 Yoube’s Story
K9 Yoube was a retired Police K9 and Project K9 Hero National Ambassador whose story touched a lot of people. Before I ever painted her, she had already built a remarkable legacy through her work and her years with Project K9 Hero.
K9 Yoube started her career partnered with the Sergeant of the K-9 Unit, until she earned a spot on the Highway Interdiction Team (HIT) for two years. There she seized countless amounts of street narcotics, drug related currency, and property related to drug trafficking. Yoube then returned to the K-9 Unit where she was dedicated to helping new handlers learn the craft of dog handling as they entered the position and the new job skill. Yoube assisted in the training of four new K-9 Handlers in her career and worked with a total of six handlers altogether throughout her tenure.
In 2020, restructuring within the unit left Yoube without a handler or a home assigned to her. She was the only single -purpose dog at the department who had went to all dual-purpose patrol/narcotics teams. Yoube spent six months in a outdoor kennel alone and in limbo, until our nonprofit was given the call to rehome her.
As an organization, we jumped at the opportunity to find Yoube a new place to live in retirement. However, when she arrived at our Rehabilitation and Rehoming Facility she won over our staff with her outgoing personality and her ability to be extremely social around all people and children.
Yoube was given the trial assignment to attend a national event with our staff and she excelled in all aspects. Meeting potential donors, taking photographs with children, and allowing others to interact with her. Yoube is now actively serving as our National Ambassador, filling the huge paw prints of K9 Flash and K9 Axel.
Project K-9 Hero is honored to help this hero, who at no fault of her own, found herself without a home or handler to go to in retirement. Yoube is living proof as to why the need for our rehoming facility and adoption cabins are so important. She will now spend the rest of her career traveling the nation and advocating for retired Police K-9s, just like her, to always have a place to go when their service is complete.
July 2013- December 2024
