The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs

by The New Yorker Magazine

  In that awkward post-marital phase when old friends still feel obliged to extend invitations and one doesn’t yet have the wit or courage to decline, I found myself at a large gathering at which Miss Merrymount was present. She was now quite blind and invariably accompanied by a young person, a round-faced girl hired as companion and guide. The fragile old lady, displayed like peacock feathers under a glass bell, had been established in a chair in a corner of the room beyond the punch bowl. At my approach, she sensed a body coming near and held out her withered hand, but when she heard my voice her hand dropped. “You have done a dreadful thing,” she said, all on one long intake of breath, like a draft rippling a piece of crinkly cellophane. Her face turned away, showing her hawk-nosed profile, as though I had offended her sight. The face of her young companion, round as a radar dish, registered slight shock; but I smiled, in truth not displeased. There is a relief at judgment, even adverse. It is good to know that somewhere a seismograph records our quakes and slippages. I imagine Miss Merrymount’s death, not too many months after this, as a final serenely flat line on the hospital monitor attached to her. Something sardonic in that flat line, too—of unviolated rectitude, of magnificent patience with a world that for over ninety years failed to prove itself other than disappointing. By this time, Julia and I were at last divorced.

  Everything of the abandoned home is lost, of course—the paintings on the walls, the way shadows and light contended in this or that corner, the gracious warmth from the radiators. The pets. Canute was a male golden retriever we had acquired as a puppy when the children were still a tumbling, pre-teen pack. Endlessly amiable, as his breed tends to be, he suffered all, including castration, as if life were a steady hail of blessings. Curiously, not long before he died, my youngest child, who sings in a female punk group that has just started up, brought Canute to the house where now I live with Jenny as my wife. He sniffed around politely and expressed with only a worried angle of his ears the wonder of his old master reconstituted in this strange-smelling home; then he collapsed with a heavy sigh onto the kitchen floor. He looked fat and seemed lethargic. My daughter, whose hair is cut short and dyed mauve in patches, said that the dog roamed at night and got into the neighbors’ garbage, and even into one neighbor’s horse feed. This sounded like mismanagement to me; Julia’s new boyfriend is a middle-aged former Dartmouth quarterback, a golf and tennis and backpack freak, and she is hardly ever home, so busy is she keeping up with him and trying to learn new games. The house and lawn are neglected; the children drift in and out with their friends and once in a while clean out the rotten food in the refrigerator. Jenny, sensing my suppressed emotions, said something tactful and bent down to scratch Canute behind one ear. Since the ear was infected and sensitive, he feebly snapped at her, then thumped the kitchen floor with his tail in apology.

  “Well, your nose feels cold.”

  Like me when snubbed by Miss Merrymount, my wife seemed more pleased than not, encountering a touch of resistance, her position in the world as it were confirmed. She discussed dog antibiotics with my daughter, and at a glance one could not have been sure who was the older, though it was clear who had the odder hair. It is true, as the cliché runs, that Jenny is young enough to be my daughter. But now that I am fifty everybody under thirty-five is young enough to be my daughter. Most of the people in the world are young enough to be my daughter.

  A few days after his visit, Canute disappeared, and a few days later he was found far out on the marshes near my old house, his body bloated. The dog officer’s diagnosis was a heart attack. Can that happen, I wondered, to four-footed creatures? The thunderbolt had hit my former pet by moonlight, his heart full of marshy joy and his stomach fat with garbage, and he had lain for days with ruffling fur while the tides went in and out. The image makes me happy, like the sight of a sail popping full of wind and tugging its boat swiftly out from shore. In truth—how terrible to acknowledge—all three of these deaths make me happy, in a way. Witnesses to my disgrace are being removed. The world is growing lighter. Eventually there will be none to remember me as I was in those embarrassing, disarrayed years while I scuttled without a shell, between houses and wives, a snake between skins, a monster of selfishness, my grotesque needs naked and pink, my social presence beggarly and vulnerable. The deaths of others carry us off bit by bit, until there will be nothing left; and this too will be, in a way, a mercy.

  | 1982 |

  “DAS MITBRINGEN VON HUNDEN IST POLIZEILICH VERBOTEN”

  (Sign at the Entrance to a Beer Garden on the Rhine)

  Alas, poor canines! Out of bounds

  Forever are these cheerful grounds.

  In vain on eager evening rounds,

  Attracted by the cheerful sounds,

  You seek admission. Man astounds

  The world of dogs by building pounds

  And even monumental mounds

  For canines strayed or dead, yet founds

  No canine tavern—which redounds

  To man’s discredit among hounds.

  This is too much. It irks me. Zounds!

  The world in kindly dogs abounds:

  Why be so mean to friendly hounds?

  Dog damn the tyrant who propounds

  This law policely banning hounds!

  —DAVID DAICHES | 1952 |

  V.I.P. TREATMENT

  BEN McGRATH

  Bruno the Brussels griffon, age one, commutes to lower Manhattan from his home in Jackson Heights. He rides the E train in a blue bag slung over the shoulder of either Jeff Simmons, a former adviser to the mayoral candidate Bill Thompson, or Alfonso Quiroz, a Con Edison spokesman, and spends his mornings and afternoons at Spot, a doggy-day-care facility on Murray Street, where he has a reputation for being rambunctious, happy-go-lucky, and a bit of a “ladies’ man,” as Simmons puts it. Bruno has light-brown fur, a block face, plaintive eyes that remind Quiroz of the young boy in the 1948 Italian movie The Bicycle Thief, and more than five hundred Facebook friends. His brief disappearance the other day prompted Yetta Kurland, an attorney in the West Village, to e-mail some twenty thousand people in search of help. One wrote back, “Dear Yetta, I am living in Paris, France, for the moment.” Most of the other e-mail recipients were Manhattanites, neighborhood activists and journalists whom Kurland had courted during her failed run for City Council, last fall. “But we all know somebody who has an aunt or an uncle in Queens,” she explained recently, and added, “I ran on a humane platform, of awareness to animal issues.”

  Bruno’s escape came on a day when Simmons and Quiroz had chosen to leave him behind in their apartment, with a dog-walker. “We found a friend of a friend who takes care of a blind cat,” Quiroz said. “You would think if there’s anybody who’s good with animals it’s someone who takes care of a blind and elderly cat.” Evidently not: within ten minutes of the dog-walker’s arrival Bruno bolted into the street. The dog-walker then hailed a cab to give chase—and ended up leaving Bruno’s collar and leash in the back seat. Thus began Operation Save Bruno, a P.R. campaign run with an efficiency rarely observed in municipal politics, Quiroz, a one-time loser for City Council in the Twenty-fifth District, commissioned a series of robo-calls to inform neighbors in the 11372 Zip Code of a dog on the loose. Mike DenDekker, a Queens assemblyman, and Helen Sears, a former City Council member, volunteered to canvass Jackson Heights, while, over on the Upper East Side, Gayle Horwitz, a former deputy comptroller, visited a local shelter, in case Bruno had hopped on the subway, attempting the commute solo. Simmons, who years ago had worked for the cable channel NY1, successfully planted a report on the next morning’s news, and the doggy-day-care owners at Spot drove out to Queens to assist in placing flyers on car windshields and telephone poles along Northern Boulevard. “After we got forty blocks away from their house, there were some very scary neighborhoods,” one of them recalled. “If I was fearing for our safety, then Bruno was definitely fearing for his.”

  As it turned out, Bruno had long since found safety, in
College Point, in the home of Juan Arroyave, a Colombian window installer, who spotted a small dog dodging trucks on Roosevelt Avenue and scooped him up. “He was going to keep the dog,” Quiroz said. “But just by happenstance he went out shopping on Northern Boulevard the next day and saw the posters.” About thirty hours had passed. Simmons and Quiroz welcomed Bruno home with ten liver treats. (He threw up.) By then, Bruno had become such a neighborhood celebrity that Quiroz felt compelled to bring him to a nearby park, for a meet-and-greet. “There was an e-waste recycling event going on,” Quiroz said. “Everybody was crying, and they were giving him kisses.” Quiroz made a five-minute YouTube video of the occasion, complete with swelling music and a clip from The Bicycle Thief, which Yetta Kurland then e-mailed to her original list of twenty thousand. “I just wanted to let you all know that, thanks to your help, against all odds, Bruno was reunited with his family,” she wrote. Bill Thompson, who has a couple of pet lizards, but no dogs, e-mailed Simmons a note of congratulations.

  So Bruno may be “the most well-known dog in Jackson Heights,” according to Quiroz, but on Murray Street last week he cut a fairly ordinary profile, stopping to pee on a planter across from the Borough of Manhattan Community College and at one point squaring off against a pit bull, who looked unimpressed. “We as humans should try to emulate dogs more,” one of the owners of Spot said. “Bruno’s going to have no memory of what he’s gone through. But we will, forever.”

  | 2010 |

  THE AMERICAN DOG IN CRISIS

  CALVIN TOMKINS

  Not so long ago, the great majority of American dogs were reasonably secure. Dog and man both knew where they stood—with each other and with their own kind. This was, to be sure, before the advent of dog psychiatrists, and it is possible that some dogs were going around even then with anxieties they simply didn’t know they had. But it can no longer be denied that today, after the cataclysms and upheavals of the last two decades, the dog’s basic concept of himself has been seriously undermined, his fundamental ethos threatened. Let us face facts: The American dog has clearly lost his way.

  Evidence of the breakdown is all around us. Since 1940, mental illness in dogs has increased 31 percent across the country (47 percent in California). Young dogs and puppies, victims of an overly permissive environment, are flunking out of obedience schools in fantastic numbers. Among mature dogs, there is a marked tendency to revert to such infantile symptoms as slipper-chewing, tail-biting, and the persistent door-scratching that typifies the indoor-outdoor syndrome. Confused and uncertain, seeking firm standards in a world of collapsing social values, the American dog looks for guidance to the natural leaders of his race, but usually he looks in vain. Popular entertainment often provides a key to socio-economic changes, and we have only to turn on television to see the dog’s problem in miniature.

  Consider, for example, the dilemma recently faced by Lassie, the great dog star, in her television series. 1 The death, a year or two ago, of a supporting player (human) and the growing up of the actor playing Lassie’s young master, Jeff, made production changes in the show imperative. The producers’ solution was to have Jeff go away to school, after first giving Lassie to a new family. Followers of traditional dog dramaturgy knew what searing scenes they could expect from this farewell. Everything pointed to two harrowing half-hour episodes in which Lassie, spurning the comfort and affection of her new home, would chew the rope that held her, and strike out into the night. Pelted by sleet and snow, reviled by farmers, pursued by yelling street gangs and dogcatchers, she would pause only to capture an escaped convict and save a child from drowning before she arrived, bedraggled but happy, in time to dissuade Jeff from accepting a gambler’s bribe to throw the hockey game with Groton. Jeff would then return to the farm, but would share Lassie with the new little boy (who would, of course, be on crutches).

  Those who watch the program know this is not what happened at all. Jeff and his mother went away, Lassie waved goodbye, and that was that. The only hint of the emotional cost involved has been a tendency, probably unnoticed by younger viewers, for Lassie to scratch herself behind the ear when she thinks the camera is pointed elsewhere. (A nervous tic?) We may well ask what has happened to the ancient code of canine loyalty when Lassie can change masters without a whimper of protest. Dr. Ernst Engelbrecht, of Leopoldville, whose Dogs in Transition: 1900–1950 is the classic study in this field (unhappily, out of print at the moment), has recently devoted a series of lectures to this very problem. “Lassie’s decision,” writes Dr. Engelbrecht, “must either be rejected or assimilated by every dog over three years of age. It cannot be ignored.”

  Fears of incipient disloyalty, however rationalized, are probably at the root of most canine neuroses. As the old individualistic standards of conduct disappear and the ancient virtues of speed, agility, and resourcefulness give way to the modern suburban dog’s obsession with security and “acceptance,” a vicious circle of tensions is built up. The dog who doubts his own dogness pretends not to see his master throw the tennis ball—and then suffers unimaginable pangs when the master withholds love in return. One watchdog in Lake Forest developed such anxieties about his supposed inability to bark at intruders that he took to barking at his own master and succeeded, finally, in driving him away from the house for good. Evidence exists that these tragic confusions are not confined to American dogs. What, for example, are we to make of Laika, the Soviet rocket dog, who was so clearly willing to sacrifice her own life for the wrong side?

  Adding to the dog’s basic insecurity is the gnawing question of status. Where do dogs stand in our society today? If we must ask the question ourselves, we may be sure the dogs have been asking it for some time. And it is difficult to escape the conclusion that in several important respects the American dog has been slipping badly.

  Modern dogs seem to shrink from the demands of high public office. Consider, for example, President Eisenhower’s Weimaraner. Passing over the fact that a non-American dog must almost certainly suffer tensions in such a very American milieu, it remains to be said that the dog has left no imprint whatever on the White House. He does not travel with the President, nor does he sit at Ike’s feet during telecasts. His personal habits, his food preferences, even his name and age, are unknown. In the past, the electorate could watch Fala taking an active part in the day-to-day life of President Roosevelt, but today we are in some doubt as to whether Mr. Eisenhower’s Weimaraner is even admitted to meetings of the National Security Council. Similarly, one wonders about Checkers. The Vice-President’s cocker sprang to fame in a dramatic broadcast some years ago, but since then he has sunk into limbo. Mr. Nixon himself took a commanding role in last autumn’s election campaign, when his name appeared almost daily on the front pages of all the newspapers, but if Checkers gave him any assistance, or even stood loyally by in case of need, we are unaware of it. Surely this indicates a serious failure of leadership on the part of our top dogs, at a time when this can least be afforded.

  It is in the home, though, that we find the most alarming symptoms of canine withdrawal. Few can deny that the dog’s home life is fraught with new anxieties. The trend to multi-dog families, far from encouraging individual initiative, as some sociologists had hoped, has had precisely the opposite effect. Conformity on the surface, fierce competition when the family is out—this seems to be the pattern. “The family hearth,” writes Engelbrecht, “has supplanted the dog pound as a source of canine traumatization.”

  COMPLAINT

  Mr. John Conroy has started heckling the Pennsylvania Railroad because Felix, his dachshund, can’t get through the automatic doors in the Pennsylvania Station. Felix is so short that he doesn’t break the beam of light that controls the mechanism, and if he tries to sneak in behind somebody else, he gets caught. Mr. Conroy wrote the stationmaster a letter, describing the situation and asking what about it. This is the reply he got: “I have your letter of recent date in regard to the difficulty your dog Felix has in operating our automatic doors
, and have referred your letter to our officials for their attention. Yours truly, W. H. Egan.” This is a very temperate reply indeed, we think, considering that our own impulse would be to ask Mr. Conroy why he didn’t get a wolfhound or patronize the Grand Central. Mr. Conroy says he isn’t going to let matters rest the way this letter leaves them; but we have an idea that the Pennsylvania Railroad is, if you know what we mean. | 1935 |

  In determining a dog’s status at home, the question of breed has now assumed overwhelming (and highly destructive) importance. It used to be that the more popular breeds stayed in vogue for years at a time, and this led to the establishment of a relatively stable hierarchy, in which each dog could formulate his self-respect within certain agreed limits. During the reign of the Airedale, for example, there was some intermittent friction between Scotties (No. 4) and wire-haired fox terriers (No. 5), but none at all between collies (No. 2) and Lhasa Apsos (No. 47). Now, however, the wild and chaotic fluctuations in popular taste have caused great anguish up and down the line. As the No. 1 position passed from cocker to boxer to beagle, all semblance of class distinction crumbled. Matters have now reached a point where dachshunds and bulldogs scarcely know from one week to the next where they stand in relation to each other. The sporting breeds dread taking the field, for fear they will lose out in the frenzied behind-the-scenes maneuvering in the big kennel clubs. Their fears are not groundless. Last year, a well-connected English setter, a fine hunting dog who was also considered a leading candidate for Best in Show at the next Westminster Kennel Club show, returned from field trials in Maryland to find that all his papers had somehow been “lost.” This breed has since declined in the over-all standings. Today, rumors spread unchecked, and as more owners adopt the deplorable practice of changing breeds each year, the climate of insecurity grows steadily worse. The upshot of all this is clearly predictable: American dogs, in despair over their personal status, are beginning to lose all sense of self. Pomeranians try to jump like Dobermans, and have heart attacks. Whippets refuse to run, in the forlorn hope that they will be mistaken for basset hounds. And surely there is no sadder sound in nature than the sound of a once proud cocker baying the moon in a cracked, tone-deaf, but unmistakable imitation of a beagle.