# Drawn at the scale he actually experiences it > The vacuum takes up the whole print and the dog is a small watching shape in the corner — the size difference is the whole joke. August 20, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/he-is-scared-of-one-thing An upright vacuum cleaner, exploded into its parts: body, hose and brush head assembled on the right, filters, a dust cylinder and fixings floating out to the left on fine leader lines, black line with orange accents, towering the full height of the print. Down in the corner, small against all of it, a Jack Russell lies flat with its ears back, watching. No text anywhere. ## Why draw the vacuum like a technical manual, not a monster? Because a manual takes its subject completely seriously, and that's exactly how he experiences it. A cartoon monster vacuum would be laughing at him — a joke made at the dog's expense. An exploded diagram does the opposite: it dismantles the machine with the same careful, dry attention an actual appliance manual gives it, filters and cylinder labelled and floating in their assembly order. [The same plain, unsentimental treatment is what makes a straightforward drawing of a three-legged dog work rather than one that visually comments on it](/stories/three-legs). Taking the enemy that seriously, rather than mocking it, is what makes the print about his fear rather than about him being silly for having it. ## Why is he drawn so small? Because the size difference is the entire mechanism, not an afterthought. The vacuum fills nearly the whole print; he's a flattened shape in one corner, easy to miss on a first look. That's deliberate — it's the same proportion the fear actually runs at from where he's standing. Draw him at a normal, confident size next to it and the joke disappears, because the whole point is that from his angle the machine really is that large relative to him. ## Does this only work for vacuums? No — the same diagram works for whatever the specific terror actually is. A bin lorry reversing, a hairdryer, a smoke alarm mid-chirp, a particular stretch of hardwood floor — [the same substitution any owner makes with their dog's one reliably stolen food works here too](/stories/the-food-he-steals): swap in the real object and keep the register exactly as dry and exact. What matters is that it's the one specific thing, not a generic list of things dogs are supposedly afraid of. ### Getting the parts right matters more than getting the whole machine right A vacuum drawn as one solid silhouette reads as decoration; the same vacuum broken into six or seven labelled components reads as documentation, which is the tone the whole design depends on. The leader lines connecting each part back to its place are doing as much work as the parts themselves. ## Does it belong to the vacuum company? Only if it's drawn as their specific product, with their branding. A generic upright's exploded shape — body, hose, brush head, filter, cylinder — isn't anyone's intellectual property; that's just what an upright vacuum is built from, and any manual for any brand draws roughly the same parts. What would need asking for is a specific manufacturer's own logo, model name or exact housing shape reproduced closely enough to be recognised as theirs. Drawn generic, the way most manuals actually render it, this is nobody's design but the household's. ## Isn't this just laughing at an anxious dog? No — taking the drawing this seriously is the opposite of laughing at him. A design that mocked the fear would draw him cowering in an exaggerated, comic way, or draw the vacuum with teeth and eyes. This one does neither — it draws the actual object with total technical neutrality and lets his flattened, watchful posture do the only expressive work in the print. [The same refusal to editorialise is what keeps a plain weekly record of an animal's habits funny rather than mean](/stories/pet-behaviour-chart) — the joke sits in the reader's own recognition, not in the drawing telling them what to feel. ## Does it print well? Cleanly — clean linework and small blocks of a single accent colour are close to ideal for this material. The leader lines and labelled parts hold at any size because they're built from hard edges rather than shading; a softer illustrated style would blur exactly the fine connecting lines that make it read as a diagram. Two colours carry it — black for the structure, orange for accents and a handful of callouts — and pale grey, white or a light stone all keep the diagram legible against the ground. ## How do I get one made? Describe the object at [JustOG](/) — what it is, and how small he should be watching it from. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). Ears back, flat to the floor, four rooms away from a machine that isn't switched on.