scout

Kaitlyn Culbertson’s standard poodle, Scout, is kind of a big deal. The 9-year-old dog once appeared in a music video by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Culbertson had sprayed a rainbow of temporary hair color into her poodle’s fur for the Marfa Film Festival. “I didn’t even know she was in the video until someone showed it to me,” Culbertson says. “She’s in there just kind of hanging out.” Culbertson says she’s not a dog person, but Scout is her second poodle. She first fell in love with the breed living in an art commune on Swiss Avenue in the ’80s. One of her roommates had a standard poodle, Delilah. “I was just so impressed with that breed, the loyalty and intelligence,” she says. When she finally bought a house in Little Forest Hills, she would have no dog but a poodle. And that was Lucy, who would often accompany her owner to sky dive festivals, where she made her own friends at the drop points. “She had all these cool personal relationships with people that I didn’t even know about until she passed away,” Culbertson says. Twenty people went on the skydive to drop Lucy’s ashes. “So when it came time to get a new puppy in my life, it was only going to be a standard poodle,” she says. Scout is trained to run alongside Culbertson’s bicycle. She also sings along to Audie Murphy while riding in the car with Culbertson and her niece and nephew.