aterrier

One theory is that there are more unadopted black dogs because there are simply more of them than canines of other shades. “I have heard that black is the dominant gene and in general that’s why there are so many of them,” says singer/songwriter Emmylou Harris. Active in the animal rescue movement, Harris adopted a big black dog, Bonaparte, years ago. “He was a goofy, poodle-looking dog,” she says. “He looked like something Dr. Seuss would have designed.” Bonaparte was her “road dog,” traveling with her on tour and when he died she went into deep grief. In his honor, she built Bonaparte’s Retreat, a rescue and foster operation in her backyard, designed with input from Friedman, and she embarked on a campaign to support pet adoption. She now travels with two “road dogs” - Keeta, a yellow mix dog saved from a 2005 hurricane in Mississippi, and Bella, a black dog with a sugar-dipped muzzle, the white and gray wisps of hair that often give black dogs an aging appearance. “Bella is Keeta’s dog,” Harris says, a “soulful” black dog of unknown age who came from an urban Nashville shelter just days before she was scheduled to be euthanized.
From Emmylou Harris’ website