Couple creates images of much-loved pets — with Jesus
September 21, 2007
By CONNIE BLOOM
AKRON BEACON-JOURNAL
AKRON, Ohio — Donna Skoda was wounded deeply when her darling pug, Emma, died two years ago. Emma was 11 years old and already gray when Skoda scooped her up and brought her home to Richfield, Ohio, to live out the rest of her years in luxury.
Skoda likes to do that. Pugs touch something deep within her, so she has made it her mission to save as many as she can.
“I have a houseful of old pugs,” she said joyfully.
One of them, Bambita Pekita Meskita Chiquita Juanita the Salsa Dancer from San Antonio, was a toothless stray she found on Mull Avenue. Her missing teeth left her tongue dangling out of her mouth. It was a look all the other pugs tried to copy.
But do as old dogs will, Bambita eventually went to eternity, as Emma would, and Skoda’s sense of loss for each was overwhelming.
“Emma died three years later of bladder cancer,” she said. “My husband and I were so taken aback. We were devastated.”
She knew her animal-loving neighbors, Chris and Kirk Raymond, would empathize, but they went one better.
“Chris and Kirk made me a little card, a picture of Emma with a halo over her head,” she said. It made her cry, and ultimately gave her a sense of relief, as if her precious pet was in a safe and lovely place.
Kirk Raymond created another card with Jesus holding Bambita in his arms.
“Kirk made it from a stock picture of Jesus in Photoshop,” said Skoda, who was moved by his generosity of spirit. “It becomes art. It’s very comforting.”
Raymond, who works at Diebold by day, is a Photoshop enthusiast who’s learning as he goes but knew he was onto something. He rolled out a Web site to offer his services to others at http://www.pettributecreations.com.
He has become skilled enough to carve a pet’s image out of an old photo and splice it into a new background while making the pose seem natural, Skoda said. She has joined the part-time business and does the framing and printing.
They work from whatever photos the pet owner happens to have. A cat Raymond put in the arms of Jesus was actually climbing over the living room couch in the original photo. Jesus had been holding a lamb.
The finished piece becomes a memorial, a tribute that will elicit stinging tears for years. For one customer, they posed a photo of a horse in radiant light with a halo overhead.
“They cry when you give it to them,” Skoda said.
Prices start at $20 for a 4-by-6-inch picture in a small, single frame and go up from there. The maximum size for the picture is 8 by 10 inches, which can be matted and framed much larger. Some people want the picture in the left half of a double frame, with a poem or other writing in the facing frame.
The Raymonds say they’ll never get rich this way they’ve made only 15 or 20 pieces so far but their mission is to comfort the grieving as well as share their faith.
“We feel if you have strong faith in Jesus and God, you’ll get this,” Kirk Raymond said.
The say their faith cured their cat, Ajax, of lymphoma. Two years ago, Ajax had hard nodules on his spleen and the vets wanted to do exploratory surgery for cancer. The Raymonds decided to take a different approach.
“I have a real strong personal relationship with God,” Chris Raymond said. “We held hands and prayed to God to save him.”
Ajax is the picture of health today and received no other intervention.
Potential customers have suggested that Kirk Raymond pose pets in fields of flowers or other nonreligious settings, but then it would be just another picture, he said.
Most people want their pets with Jesus, doves or clouds with radiant light, the Raymonds said. An 80-year-old pet owner told them she cried when she got her photo, but then a peace came over her.
You may be wondering about the Raymonds’ menagerie, which is formidable. They have a rat terrier, Mackie, who thinks she rules the roost, and two other felines, who really hold the keys to the kingdom. Copycat is a snow leopard; and Farrell, an orange and white. Ajax is a marble Bengal.
They all go outside to play in a safe enclosure but somehow manage to drag the strangest things inside.
Among them, a two-foot garter snake, chipmunks, mice, beetles, moths and frogs.
“I found not a baby but a teenage possum in the bathroom,” Chris Raymond said.
Such are the joys of pet ownership.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
