Koons was not among the 44 American artists selected to exhibit his work in documenta 9 in 1992, but was commissioned by three art dealers to create a piece for nearby Arolsen Castle. The result was Puppy, a 43 ft (13 m) tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrie puppy, executed in a variety of flowers (including Marigolds, Begonias, Impatiens, Petunias, and Lobelias) on a transparent colour-coated chrome stainless steel substructure.

Oddly enough, the show, "Made for Arolsen," was organized by Veit Loers, the director of the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel, who was keeping himself busy while Documenta took over his home museum. As word spread, many Documenta visitors drove over to see the dog, which sat dramatically, if obediently, in the courtyard of the handsome Baroque palace. After a while, the ubiquitous Documenta question, "What do you think of the show?," was almost inevitably followed by "Have you seen the Koons?"

In 1995, the sculpture was dismantled and re-erected at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Sydney Harbour on a new, more permanent, stainless steel armature with an internal irrigation system. While the Arolsen Puppy had 20 000 plants, the Sydney version held around 60 000.

The piece was purchased in 1997 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and installed on the terrace outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In the summer of 2000, the statue traveled to New York City for a temporary exhibition at Rockefeller Center.

(With material from Wikipedia and The New York Times)