Maurice Sendak’s Dogs Were the Love of His Life

By Stefania Van Dyke

August 19, 2024

Stefania Van Dyke is Associate Director, Interpretive Engagement. She has been at the DAM since 2012. She recommends you check out the Thread Studio on level 6 of the Martin Building.

Author-illustrator Maurice Sendak adopted his first dog, a Sealyham terrier named Jennie, when he was 25. She appeared in nearly all of his books from 1954 to 1967, when she died. Do your own scavenger hunt by flipping through his pages to find her in Where the Wild Things Are, Hector Protector, Chicken Soup With Rice, and One Was Johnny, among others.

Jennie’s most prominent role is as the star of Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life, a book that takes a whimsical approach to mortality and complex animal consciousness that Sendak wrote as a tribute to her during her fatal sickness in 1967. According to the book The Art of Maurice Sendak, by Selma Lanes, he wrote to friends, “My best friend, my dog Jennie, has died,” and “I still dream of Jennie, and the pain is unrelenting.”

Gray ink drawing of a child on the floor and a dog at the table — Maurice Sendak, *Higglety Pigglety Pop!,* 1967, ink on paper, 9 ¼ x 7 1/2 in. ©The Maurice Sendak Foundation

Sendak gave himself time to grieve, and in 1972 he adopted a golden retriever named Io and a German shepherd named Erda. They were his inspiration for Some Swell Pup, or Are You Sure You Want a Dog?, a training manual for aspiring young dog owners.

Dogs continued to be part of Sendak’s life for the following decades. Some of his later German shepherds were trained by the monks of New Skete in Cambridge, NY. As a tribute to Sendak, and with the support of The Maurice Sendak Foundation, the monastery named its dog training facility after him in 2016.

The monks wrote of their friend, “Not only was he a lover of all things dog, he saw clearly their spiritual importance and how they can enrich our lives when they are cared for and loved.”