photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Cheeseburger, a patrol service dog for the Lawrence Police Department, eats his dinner off a specially coated canvas Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022, a process that will render a painting for auction for Friends of the K9 Vest Midwest. Emily Fawcett, who founded the nonprofit, is at left.

In addition to fighting crime, Lawrence’s police dogs also help raise money for charity. On Sunday, they did so in a particularly colorful and gleeful way, by making art.

The three patrol service dogs for the Lawrence Police Department — Mack, Shadow and Cheeseburger — each created a painting that will be auctioned off to benefit a group that’s looking out for their interests: a nonprofit that provides bulletproof vests for police dogs.

In the manner of true “starving artists,” the three dogs — two Belgian Malinois and one German shepherd — created their masterpieces with their mouths as they devoured their Sunday dinners off a special canvas.

The creative process was actually a partnership and worked like this: The dogs’ handlers, all Lawrence police officers, squirted paint onto blank canvases, covered the canvases in plastic, spread some tempting dog food on top and then let their canine colleagues elevate their Jackson Pollock-style splatters into whatever new patterns their wolfish appetites dictated.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Officer Josh Doncouse applies paint to canvas in preparation for patrol service dog Shadow to create a painting, Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022, at Lawrence Police Headquarters.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Officer Josh Doncouse helps put a canvas in a plastic bag with Emily Fawcett, of Friends of the K9 Vest Midwest, in preparation for patrol service dog Shadow to create a painting, Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022, at Lawrence Police Headquarters.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Officers Josh Doncouse, in uniform, and Kevin Henderson encourage patrol service dog Shadow to get creative with his artwork Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022, at Lawrence Police Headquarters. Lawrence Mayor Lisa Larsen, at left, photographed the scene.

photo by: Friends of the K9 Vest Midwest

A painting created by a police dog in Kansas for Friends of the K9 Vest Midwest. The paintings created by the Lawrence dogs should be similar to this, although they were not unveiled Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022, at Lawrence Police Headquarters.

The chaotically vivid paintings, after drying for a day, were to be unveiled and auctioned off Tuesday night.

Last year one of the paintings fetched $1,000, and this year the police department is hoping that serious art lovers — OK, maybe just serious dog lovers — will bid even more.

The department is eager to raise money for Friends of the K9 Vest Midwest, the nonprofit advocacy group that supplies the life-saving vests, and officers are especially eager not to be outdone by the police department in Junction City, which had a dog painting sell for $2,000.

“Junction City has formally challenged Lawrence and said, ‘Bring it!'” said Emily Fawcett, who founded Friends of the K9 Vest Midwest in May 2021.

Fawcett is dedicated to advocating for police dogs, who spend their lives in service to the community, often without protective gear. Her organization has provided two custom-fit bulletproof vests to the Lawrence department and many more to departments across the state — at a cost of about $2,000 each.

It’s a charitable cause that Lawrence Police Officer Kevin Henderson, Mack’s handler, is passionate about.

“They’ve bought two vests for us, so we’re talking $4,000. It’s a huge outlay of money,” said Henderson, who tries to return the favor by participating in various K9 events and demonstrations around the state with Fawcett.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Officer Kevin Henderson shows patrol service dog Mack in his custom-fit ballistic vest Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022, at Lawrence Police Headquarters.

Henderson noted that Lawrence’s police dogs are patrol service dogs, unlike dogs that, say, strictly sniff for drugs. That means that the dogs can be in harm’s way when police are confronting suspects.

“People are armed a lot nowadays,” he said. “There are a lot of guns out there, and this gives the dogs an extra safety net.”

Fawcett said the dog paintings have been a successful way to raise funds for the vests, and they’ve also allowed officers to have some fun as well, as evidenced by Shadow’s handler Josh Doncouse, whose creative instincts led him beyond random paint splattering Sunday to something vaguely resembling a sunset in a forest.

But what about the criticism — also faced by many two-legged Abstract Expressionists — that all these paintings look the same? Well, the uncultured may think so, but not Fawcett.

“Every K9 is completely different,” she asserted, with the confidence of an art critic. “We’ve had K9s run off with the canvas like it’s a Frisbee … Some will roll on it, some will toss it in the air, some will just look at it like it’s on fire.”

Tuesday’s auction will be at Six Mile Chop House and Tavern, 4931 W. Sixth St. The auction is scheduled to begin around 8 p.m. It will be preceded by a public Christmas party sponsored by AT&T and Boulevard Brewing Company. Proceeds will benefit Friends of the K9 Vest Midwest.

Henderson said the goal was simply to raise as much money as possible “so any surrounding agency that needs a ballistic vest for their dog can get one.”

The paintings are signed by dogs and their handlers: Shadow, who is 3 and handled by Officer Josh Doncouse; Mack, who is 2 and handled by Officer Kevin Henderson; and soon-to-be-retiring Cheeseburger, who is 9 and handled by Officer Matt Weidl.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Officer Matt Weidl applies paint to a canvas in preparation for patrol service dog Cheeseburger to create a painting, Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022, at Lawrence Police Headquarters.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Officer Kevin Henderson applies paint for a blue-themed canvas to be completed by his canine colleague Mack Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022, at Lawrence Police Headquarters.

photo by: Friends of the K9 Vest Midwest

Some paintings created by police dogs in Kansas for Friends of the K9 Vest Midwest. The paintings created by the Lawrence dogs should be similar to these, although they were not unveiled Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022, at Lawrence Police Headquarters.