Schoep the Dog Becomes Internet Sensation

Via Duluth News Tribune - It says something about the joyous frenzy that has arisen around John Unger and his dog, Schoep, this week that Unger and photographer Hannah Stonehouse Hudson have had to bring in a public relations agent.

“My phone is ringing off the hook,” Hudson said during a phone interview on Thursday. “I have 500 unanswered e-mails at this point.”

Hudson took the shot seen around the world — Unger holding the blissfully slumbering Schoep, his 19-year-old shepherd mix, in the waters of Lake Superior — on July 31 and posted it on her Facebook page on August 1. By Sunday, it had gotten 1.8 million views; the last she checked it was close to 3 million.

The News Tribune’s story about the picture, which appeared Monday, was only the beginning of a flurry of media attention. Among other outlets, their story has been on the Huffington Post, CNN, Fox News, the “Today” show’s blog, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, City Pages in Minneapolis and “a bunch of Croatian TV stations and newspapers,” said Hudson, whose home base is Bayfield, Wisconsin.

Unger said he has heard from people in Hungary, Russia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Great Britain, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Australia, New Zealand and “places I had to look up because I had no idea where they were.”

Helping Unger and Hudson manage the attention and demands on their time is Julie McGarvie Unger, John Unger’s sister-in-law, who has a career in public relations.

“It’s nothing but interviews now, before it was nothing but berries,” said John Unger, who is a caretaker on a fruit farm outside of Bayfield. “That’s all I had to think about before was berries.”

Read full story at http://bit.ly/MLGELR

Written by John Lundy
Image by Hannah Stonehouse Hudson