It’s worth noting that the first “humane society” began, in the eighteenth century, as an organization to benefit people, not animals. The dogs were the guards, not the guarded; the Royal Humane Society was founded in London in 1774 for the rescue of drowning persons. Thus a portrait entitled A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society, by the famed dog artist Edwin Landseer, pictures a placid and handsome Newfoundland lying on a pier by the water’s edge. (The Newfie, together with the mastiff, was the nineteenth century’s hero dog of choice.) Today’s humane societies, including some that date back more than a hundred years, are “societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals”; significantly, they were founded in both England and America shortly after the abolition of human slavery and involved many of the same activists.
There is something right about using the word “humane” to describe the impulse to protect animals. The mistreatment of defenseless dogs arouses in us profound emotions of empathy and outrage. All our own fears of betrayal and abandonment leap immediately to mind. Only the other evening, I saw a local news feature about two dogs, nicknamed by their rescuers Mama and Baby, who had been tied to a tree in a densely wooded area and left to die. The reporter herself was in manifest distress, and explained that Baby reminded her of her own beloved dog.
Whether leashed or unleashed in life, the dog roams at large in our cultural imagination. An abandoned dog can break our hearts in ways that human strays all too often no longer do. Yet, at the same time, the dog offers a kind of emotional and practical microclimate in which we can make manageable a host of problems that in other areas of life seem overwhelming or out of control: health insurance, day care, preschool, homelessness, depression, euthanasia. The president of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis has observed ruefully, “How ironic that we seem to care more about the happiness of animals than humans.”
But is it ironic? Or is it just another way of locating and pursuing human pleasures—like love—that seem increasingly hard to come by? As the market for pet products and services booms, the notion of spending so much time and money on dogs strikes many people as vain, as another way of “putting on the dog” by competing in ostentatious expense. No doubt the human comedy in the cavalcade of pet paraphernalia has as much to do with excesses of capitalism as with excesses of emotion. Why should it be more peculiar to have seven different kinds of dog leash than seven different kinds of Barbie doll? The fortunes of people and dogs have been linked for centuries, and if our own century has a sometimes risible way of showing as much, that is a sign of the century’s folly, not the dog-lover’s.
In the end, it is not substitution or anthropomorphism that produces the human love of dogs and the current preoccupation with them in our culture. The pathos of lost, unwanted, abandoned, neglected, or maltreated animals—from Homer’s loyal Argus to yesterday’s Mama and Baby—speaks, somehow, to the rootlessness and nostalgia inherent in the postmodern condition. Blessedly, dogs are free of irony and are strangers to cynicism (despite the etymology of the word—from the Greek kynikos, “dog-like”). In a relentlessly ironic age, their uncritical demeanor is perhaps just what we need. It is with dogs that, very often, we permit ourselves feelings of the deepest joy and the deepest sorrow. “Dogs are not our whole life,” Roger Caras writes in Dog People, “but they make our lives whole.” In this sense—so one could almost claim—it is the dog that makes us human.
Lassie used to come home every week, often having rescued Mom or Timmy from some scrape on the way. Now our welcome mats display two-dimensional collies—or Labradors, or Afghans (“available in fifteen breeds”)—and working dog owners call home to speak to their pets on the answering machine. Home is where the dog is. If the dog brings back the fifties in a miniaturized form, it’s because the dog is what we would like to have been to our parents: totally lovable, totally loved. The puppy represents what the yuppie fantasizes about childhood, what the older person fantasizes about youth, what the city-dweller fantasizes about the country, what the weary workaholic fantasizes about freedom, what the human spouse or partner fantasizes about spontaneity, emotional generosity, and togetherness. In soft-focus television commercials, and at the front door, the dog, leash patiently in mouth, is always waiting for you.
| 1996 |
WISDOM TINGED WITH JOY
Out of the mouths of city dogs
have come some useful truths.
Barks and whines—noise to some—
are fraught with ancient wisdom.
A dog, to share his basic instinct,
will warn, say, of the landlord
at the door to spoil your day.
“Don’t open,” he barks. In vain.
When the van is loaded: laptop, mattresses, and microwave,
a wise dog rides in stoic silence
to the new (smaller) apartment
where joyously he soon resumes
his job of watching over rooms.
—DOROTHEA TANNING | 2006 |
“Yes, I’m talking to you. I believe you’re the only Sparky in the house.”
DOG LANGUAGE
IAN FRAZIER
Cycle Dog Food, a product of the Pet Foods Division of the General Foods Corporation, sponsored a K-9 Frisbee Disc Catch and Fetch Contest in the Central Park Sheep Meadow on a recent Saturday:
“You’re my sweet dog. You’re my sweet dog! Yes, you are. Yes … you … are! You want to wear a nice red bandanna around your neck, like that dog there and that dog there and that dog over there? Do you? You want me to wear a T-shirt with my picture and your picture on it, like that owner over there? Huh? You want your own fan club, like that dog named Morgan? You want your own cheering section, with people who cheer when you run after the Frisbee and who jump in the air when you jump in the air to catch the Frisbee? Maybe if you get to be National Champion Frisbee-Catcher, like that dog Ashley Whippet, you could be a Good-Will Ambassador for Cycle Dog Food, the way he is. Is that what you want? I know what you want. You want a Liv-A-Snap. You feel you’re not getting your proper Liv-A-Snappage. Here’s a nice Liv-A-Snap. Sit up. Here you—Whoa! Almost took my finger off. You certainly are insistent about getting proper Liv-A-Snappage. You want me to buy you some nice Cycle Dog Food? Now, I can’t buy you Cycle 1, because that’s ‘for a puppy’s special growing needs,’ and I can’t buy you Cycle 3, because that’s diet dog food, for overweight dogs, and I can’t buy you Cycle 4, because that’s for old dogs, so I guess I’d have to buy you Cycle 2—‘specially formulated for your dog’s active years.’ Are you in your active years? I should say so! If I threw you the Frisbee, would you show just how active your active years are? Would you run straight to the concession stand, like that basset hound? Would you knock over the man from Channel 4, like that half collie, half German shepherd? Would you run over and sniff that bush? Would you make me grab you by the tail and wrestle you to the ground before you gave back the Frisbee? Would you bounce in the air like a Super Ball, the way that poodle is doing? Would you stop running if I threw it too far, like that terrier? Would you discuss those pictures of the moons of Jupiter that Voyager 2 sent back? The ones with the erupting volcanoes? Huh? Would you? You are silent, but your eyes speak volumes. You’re my sweet dog! Yes, you are!”
| 1979 |
From “THE PET DEPARTMENT”
JAMES THURBER
The idea for the department was suggested by the daily pet column in the New York Evening Post, and by several others.
Q. I enclose a sketch of the way my dog, William, has been lying for two days now. I think there must be something wrong with him. Can you tell me how to get him out of this?
Mrs. L. L. G.
A. I should judge from the drawing that William is in a trance. Trance states, however, are rare with dogs. It may just be ecstasy. If at the end of another twenty-four hours he doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere, I should give him up. The position of the ears leads me to believe that he may be enjoying himself in a quiet way, but th
e tail is somewhat alarming.
Q. My husband, who is an amateur hypnotizer, keeps trying to get our bloodhound under his control. I contend that this is not doing the dog any good. So far he has not yielded to my husband’s influence, but I am afraid that if he once got under, we couldn’t get him out of it.
A. A. T.
A. Dogs are usually left cold by all phases of psychology, mental telepathy, and the like. Attempts to hypnotize this particular breed, however, are likely to be fraught with a definite menace. A bloodhound, if stared at fixedly, is liable to gain the impression that it is under suspicion, being followed, and so on. This upsets bloodhound’s life by completely reversing its whole scheme of behavior.
Q. My police dog has taken to acting very strange, on account of my father coming home from work every night for the past two years and saying to him, “If you’re a police dog, where’s your badge?,” after which he laughs (my father).
Ella R.
A. The constant reiteration of any piece of badinage sometimes has the same effect on present-day neurotic dogs that it has on people. It is dangerous and thoughtless to twit a police dog on his powers, authority, and the like. From the way your dog seems to hide behind tables, large vases, and whatever that thing is that looks like a suitcase, I should imagine that your father has carried this thing far enough—perhaps even too far.
Q. The fact that my dog sits this way so often leads me to believe that something is preying on his mind. He seems always to be studying. Would there be any way of finding out what this is?
Arthur
A. Owing to the artificially complex life led by city dogs of the present day, they tend to lose the simpler systems of intuition which once guided all breeds, and frequently lapse into what comes very close to mental perplexity. I myself have known some very profoundly thoughtful dogs. Usually, however, their problems are not serious and I should judge your dog has merely mislaid something and wonders where he put it.
Q. No one has been able to tell us what kind of dog we have. I am enclosing a sketch of one of his two postures. He only has two. The other one is the same as this except he faces in the opposite direction.
Mrs. Eugenia Black
A. I think that what you have is a cast-iron lawn dog. The expressionless eye and the rigid pose are characteristic of metal lawn animals. And that certainly is a cast-iron ear. You could, however, remove all doubt by means of a simple test with a hammer and a cold chisel, or an acetylene torch. If the animal chips, or melts, my diagnosis is correct.
Q. Mr. Jennings bought this beast when it was a pup in Montreal for a St. Bernard, but I don’t think it is. It’s grown enormously and is stubborn about letting you have anything, like the bath towel it has its paws on, and the hat, both of which belong to Mr. Jennings. He got it that bowling ball to play with but it doesn’t seem to like it. Mr. Jennings is greatly attached to the creature.
Mrs. Fanny Edwards Jennings
A. What you have is a bear. While it isn’t my bear, I should recommend that you dispose of it. As these animals grow older they get more and more adamant about letting you have anything until finally there might not be anything in the house you could call your own—except possibly the bowling ball. Zoos use bears. Mr. Jennings could visit it.
Q. Sometimes my dog does not seem to know me. I think he must be crazy. He will draw away, or show his fangs, when I approach him.
H. M. Morgan, Jr.
A. So would I, and I’m not crazy. If you creep up on your dog the way you indicate in the drawing, I can understand his viewpoint. Put your shirt in and straighten up; you look as if you had never seen a dog before, and that is undoubtedly what bothers the animal. These maladjustments can often be worked out by the use of a little common sense.
Q. I have three Scotch terriers which take things out of closets and down from shelves, etc. My veterinarian advised me to gather together all the wreckage, set them down in the midst of it, and say, “Ba-ad Scotties!” This, however, merely seems to give them a kind of pleasure. If I spank one, the other two jump me—playfully, but they jump me.
Mrs. O. S. Proctor
A. To begin with, I question the advisability of having three Scotch terriers. They are bound to get you down. However, it seems to me that you are needlessly complicating your own problem. The Scotties probably think that you are trying to enter into the spirit of their play. Their inability to comprehend what you are trying to get at will in the end make them melancholy, and you and the dogs will begin to drift farther and farther apart. I’d deal with each terrier, and each object, separately, beginning with the telephone, the disconnection of which must inconvenience you sorely.
| 1930 |
“I’m very sorry, Madam, but the one in the middle is stuffed, poor fellow.”
DOG TROUBLE
CATHLEEN SCHINE
Four years ago, I was in a relationship that everyone who cared about me considered abusive. I was covered with bruises and scars. When my older son came home from college, he was greeted with a scene of loud, belligerent menace. My younger son, who still lived with us, tried to reach out, but more often than not his kindness was met by violence. My mother was terrified and refused to set foot in our house. In fact, no one came to visit us anymore. Nor were we welcome at anyone else’s house. Even a short walk on the street held the threat of an ugly brawl. At night, I lay in bed, felt the warmth of his body beside me, and tried not to move. I didn’t want to set him off. He was volatile, unpredictable. But I felt responsible for him. And, against all odds, I loved him.
He was not my husband, with whom I had just split up. Nor was he my boyfriend. (I had made one of those unforeseen middle-aged discoveries and was living with a woman.) My looming, destructive, desperate, and compelling companion was not even a human being. He was a dog. Or, as my friends and family pointed out, he was “just” a dog.
He appeared to be a lovely little dog, about two and a half years old, when we first saw him. It was a spring day, and he stood at the end of a long line of caged dogs in a Los Angeles pet-supply store, all strays to be adopted, all barking and yapping and hurling themselves against their wire enclosures. But he neither barked nor yapped. He stood politely, his head cocked expectantly. He wagged his tail in vigorous anticipation. When I picked him up, he squirmed with joy and lunged, ecstatic, licking my face, overwhelming me with a wave of urgent, instant love.
“Why do you want a dog?” my mother asked me. “I know why you want a dog. Because your son is going to college.” She looked at me pityingly. “When you went to college, I got a geranium.”
Buster, which is what we named him, was a seventeen-pound bowlegged mutt with a nondescript coat of short brown hair and a bulldog chest. His tail was far too long for his body, a dachshund’s tail. One ear stood up, the other flopped down. His face had the big, worried eyes of a Chihuahua, the anxious furrowed brow of a pug, and the markings of a German shepherd. He yodelled like a beagle and shook his toys with the neck-wrenching vigor of a pit bull terrier. A tough stray missing two toes on his left hind foot, he had been picked up in South L.A. and dumped in the city pound, where, we were told, larger dogs stole his food, until, the day before he was to be euthanized, he was saved by a private rescue group that tried to find a home for him. After we discovered Buster, a representative of the group came to our house to make sure it was safe for the dog. She neglected to tell us that the dog was not safe for us. Perhaps the rescuers were blinded by hope, since we had lifted the dog from his crate and hugged and kissed him with no ill effect. Perhaps they were confused. They had so many dogs to place in homes. Perhaps they were simply desperate.
I grew up reading books about heroic collies. It was from the novels of the popular writer Albert Payson Terhune, treasured by my father before me, that I learned the word “puttee.” Terhune would don a pair to walk through the grounds of Sunnybank. I also learned about “carrion,” in which his dogs would roll luxuriously, and a “veranda,” on which they would sit of an evening, c
urled contentedly at the feet of their god. Sunnybank was two generations and several classes and ethnic groups away from my world. Terhune, who in the books referred to himself as the Master, raised collies on a sprawling estate in northern New Jersey, which in his novels was called The Place. As impeccably bred as Sunnybank Lad, the Master claimed ancestors who had come to the New World from Holland and England in the seventeenth century. Terhune heatedly defended the rights of dogs and trees, but he was not a man of the people. There is a wonderful story by James Thurber describing the Master’s highborn rage (“like summer thunder”) when a Mr. Jacob R. Ellis and family, Midwestern tourists come to take a gander at Sunnybank in their Ford sedan, ran over the beloved champion Sunnybank Jean. And the Master’s disgust for Negroes and the “rich city dweller of sweatshop origin” was virulent and unashamed. But I noticed none of that as a child, for we had collies, too. Our patient, plodding dogs with their matted ruffs in no way resembled the grand animals of the novels, but they did follow my brother and me protectively around the neighborhood. Would they have leaped at the throat of an attacker, like Buff of “Buff: A Collie” or Lad in “The Juggernaut”? Would they have instinctively guided stolen sheep back into their proper herd? Or wandered for months, living on squirrels, looking for me, their only true Mistress? One of them took long walks every day with an inmate from the sanitarium just down the road. They herded children during recess at an elementary school nearby. They wandered for miles until someone from several towns away would check their tags and call us to come get them, at which point they would greet us with unalloyed, and unsurprised, joy. This was my background with dogs: they were in the background. Or they were in books.
The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs Page 11
