Arbus rarely travelled away from New York and it was in her home city that she made her best-known work. This photograph was made on a rare trip to New Orleans, but was the only photograph that that she printed from the visit. It may have been part of a project on people and their pets that Arbus intended for a magazine story, which also included the photograph, 'Tattooed Lady with a Dog' (1964). In this humorous image, however, the pet is actually a stuffed toy animal perched amusingly on its own seat next to its owner’s chair. Arbus’s use of the flash humorously illuminates and highlights the similarity between the bleached blonde, bouffant hairstyles of the ‘lady bartender’ and her pretend poodle.