SALLY ANN SHURMUR Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Saturday, February 2, 2008 12:00 am
GLENROCK - Jeannie Ginder, owner of Hair Designs Unlimited on Glenrock's Birch Street, has seen a lot of bad hair in her day.
But she loved what she saw for the first time on Thursday evening.
"I think she's fabulous, even if she is a blonde," the dark-haired Ginder said as she tried to take a better look at her very own P. Doggie chainsawed prairie dog sculpture. "You know, we can always change her hair color."
As Ginder squished closer to find her sculpture on the dance floor at the Four Aces, she saw for the very first time that "Preenie Pincurl Pooch," had also had a recent pedicure - her toenails are painted bright red.
"It's exciting, it's fascinating, I just know she's mine," Ginder said.
"Preenie Pincurl" is one of 22 sculptures business owners and organizations paid between $350 and $500 to own and display outside their Glenrock properties.
They are the work of former Casper resident Rick Rowley, owner of Lost Woods Gallery in Lincoln, Mont.
Rowley was also at Thursday's unveiling of the finished work, along with his son, Jade, who is the primary painter.
The daddy of the prairie dog project is pharmacist Dan Schreiner, owner of Deer Creek Drug.
He unabashedly admits that the connection between nearby Douglas and its mystical jackalope initially gave him a thought.
That thought resulted in "a lot of man hours," Schreiner says, between September and Thursday.
P. Doggie already has a place in Glenrock mascot lore, through a series of drawings done by resident Diane Filing for Chamber of Commerce newsletters.
The patriarch of the prairie dog community is Glenrock "Glen" P. Doggie, whose permanent residence will be outside the Chamber of Commerce office on Birch.
His length of heavy chain will forecast the wind and he comes equipped with the ability to hold a large sign, forecasting upcoming local events as well as the weather.
It's no accident that the prairie dog community was unveiled so close to Groundhog Day.
"We'd like to give that guy in Pennsylvania and Lander Lil a run for their money," Schreiner said.
Many of the business owners, like Ginder, had not seen her sculpture before Thursday.
"I just took their business and went with it," Rowley said. "A welder, a butcher, I just made a community of them."
Each sculpture was given a name just for the unveiling by Rock in the Glen Theatre players Ada Jane Pauline and Patty Fenner, who performed a dramatic reading as each statue was unveiled from beneath a white sheet.
Schreiner said he expects owners to rename them if they choose.
To protect them from the wind (what wind?) and more certain snow, Bertha Book Doggie, Beaver Cleaver Doggie, Fannie Foto Pooch, Sally Suds Pooch and the rest will be placed inside the windows of the recently reopened Commerce Block Building on the corner of 4th and Birch streets.
In the spring, they'll be given to their owners for good.
And Ginder is happy to wait.
"Whatever the town needs, all I know is she's mine," she said.
Community News editor Sally Ann Shurmur can be reached at (307) 266-0520; sallyann.shurmur@trib.com or see her profile and blog at my.trib.com/Sal/blog