The Abandoned Saskatchewan Hotdog

CBC Regina aired a spot featuring the Diggity Dawgs’ story! Listen here or watch here.

I’ve stumbled onto a lot of unexpected things on my road trips, but I never expected one of those discoveries to mean so much to someone else. I certainly didn’t expect to reunite someone with a long-lost piece of their past.

But it happened.
I was driving somewhere in Saskatchewan, looking for the sort of nothing that still has a story to tell. The scenery was dirt roads, rolling grasslands, and not much else. But as I crested a hill, something strange appeared on the horizon.

Just the tip of it at first… then the whole wiener. A 10-foot hotdog, sitting just over the hill.

That's the sort of thing you investigate.

After I cleared the hill, I saw it for what it was: an old food truck with a colossal hotdog stretching across its roof. Ketchup. Mustard. Relish. All the fixin’s skillfully sculpted into a nitrate-laden crown. The side of the truck read Diggity Dawgs in a hand-painted script. Someone put love and elbow grease into this dawg.

It sat parked beside an old baseball diamond, overgrown with weeds. A decent enough resting place for a hotdog truck. Peaceful, certainly. I took a few photos and went on my way. It was a nice little treasure to find in the middle of nowhere, but my mind soon moved on to other things.

Months later I received an email. A guy named Kenny had seen my photo and wanted to know where it was taken.

Turns out, it used to be his.

He bought the Diggety Dawg back in 2008 and ran it as a food truck for years with his wife and daughter. But life took a turn, as it does. Divorce, bills, tough luck and none of my business. He had to sell it in 2015. Kenny said he hated to do it but needed the money. He told me he often wondered what had happened to it.

These photos of the Diggity Dawg are provided by Kenny Chaplin

But the story got even stranger as we talked. The truck was never built to sell real hotdogs. It was constructed as a prop for a Canadian movie called Finn on the Fly. You can even spot it in the trailer, right after someone yells, “Follow that hotdog”.

With the movie career in the rear window, the dawg was auctioned off, and Kenny, who worked in film production, snagged it and turned it into a working food truck.

After he sold it, the Diggity Dawg bounced around. Someone tried to make it a business again but couldn’t get the permits. Then it wound up on a reservation, serving as a tour bus for a metal band. Eventually, it was parked beside that field where I found it — sunburned, pocked with bullet holes, and weather-beaten by Saskatchewan wind.

When Kenny reached out, I wasn’t sure if I could give him a clear idea of where the old truck was. Saskatchewan is a big place. Thankfully, I had a general sense of where I’d been and a brother who’s good at Google Maps. We scoured satellite view until we found it; a little tan speck beside a barely visible baseball diamond. I sent Kenny the coordinates.

He drove out the next  weekend. Clearly, he was motivated. Hell, if you speak to Kenny, you know he’s motivated! He found it right where I’d photographed it.

Kenny tracked down the owner, but found they weren’t eager to sell. I guess they dreamed of removing the hotdog and turning the old food truck into a camper. Kenny tried to explain that the value wasn’t in the old vehicle but in the hotdog. The sculpture. The diggity is in the dawg, not the old bus chassis.

Eventually, they came around.

Kenny’s got his hotdog back. He’s restoring the Diggity Dawg to its former glory, from the bun to the foam ketchup. You can follow his restoration @kennychaplin. I can’t wait to see it back in service.

I spend a lot of time photographing things that don’t come back. Old motels, collapsing buildings, so many places left to crumble and disappear.

This one came back. Long live the Diggety Dawg.