Humans are dependent on dogs even in death. In numerous mythologies, dogs and dog-like beings appear as psychopomps that guide the deceased into the afterlife, reflecting our species’ unusually mutualistic dynamic. In Third Thresh (2022), I use clay to recreate a ritual in which a dog’s tail is removed upon death and placed beneath its head, which is filled with food in hopes of ensuring the animal’s reincarnation as a human in the next life. By aiding the dog’s death process, the role of psychopomp is inverted and confused, reflecting how humans and dogs “are training each other in acts of communication we barely understand. We make each other up, in the flesh."