ghost stories. The Blue Dog was made popular by Absolut Vodka in 1992, when Rodrigue was honored as an Absolut Vodka artist joining famous artists such as Andy Warhol and glass artist Hans Godo Frabel. The Blue Dog was used by both Absolut Vodka and the Xerox Corporation through national ad campaigns The ghostly blue spaniel/terrier is often featured with a white nose and yellow eyes. Rodrigue has galleries in Carmel, California; Lafayette, Louisiana; and New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2007, the Dixon Gallery and Gardens hosted a 40-year Rodrigue retrospective exhibition, which traveled in 2008 to the New Orleans Museum of Art. Rodrigue was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette on May 17, 2009. In 2011 the Boy Scouts of America honored him with the Distinguished Eagle Award. In 2013 he received the Opus Award from the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. In 2004, Rodrigue came to Shreveport with another incoming Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco of Lafayette, with whom he made an appearance at the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum, where he autographed Hathaway's menu from more than twenty years earlier. Death In October 2013, George and his wife Wendy told the New Orleans Magazine that Rodrigue had been diagnosed in 2012 with Stage 4 lung cancer and that tumors had spread throughout his body. Rodrigue believed it could be linked to his spraying canvases with a toxic varnish inside an unventilated studio early in his career. On December 14, 2013, Rodrigue died at the age of 69. A mass was held on December 19 at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. Response to Hurricane Katrina Forced to relocate, Rodrigue temporarily moved his base of operations to Lafayette. Days after the disaster, he created We Will Rise Again, depicting the American flag covered with water, to benefit the Red Cross in response to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. "The Blue Dog is partly submerged, and its eyes, normally yellow, are red with a broken heart," Rodrigue wrote in September 2005. "Like a ship's S.O.S., the red cross on the dog's chest calls out for help." "We Will Rise Again" was the first of five works that the acclaimed artist created for his new initiative, Blue Dog Relief: George Rodrigue Art Campaign for Recovery. To directly benefit the New Orleans Museum of Art, which was closed for six months due to flood damage, he