The most intriguing research concerned whether dogs can sniff out cancer. A letter to the medical journal the Lancet in 2001 reported the curious case of a Labrador called Parker. His master, a man in his sixties, developed a nasty patch of eczema on his left thigh, and Parker began to sniff at it obsessively. Eventually Parker’s master took the hint and visited his doctor: analysis revealed that the lesion was in fact a basal cell carcinoma, and once it had been removed, Parker’s interest in his master’s left trouser-leg disappeared. (This story worried me a bit since Kudu has developed a habit of licking my legs after my bath, but since he does it to all of us, he may just like our soap.)
In 2004 a team of scientists in Buckinghamshire produced research to show that Parker was not a one-off. Over a period of seven months they trained six dogs to sniff for signs of bladder cancer in the urine of patients from their oncology department. At the end of the training period they were able to report that the dogs had managed a 41 per cent success rate in identifying urine from cancer patients, compared with the 14 per cent success rate that could have been expected by chance alone.
The scientists were very impressed by this but, based purely on Kudu’s ferocious concentration when sniffing, I would have expected a better figure. As all owners know, dogs just love sniffing pee, and the scientists were offering this group ‘freshly defrosted liquid specimens’, which sounds like a doggy version of a fine Burgundy. I suspect the dogs were simply faking their failures in the hope of keeping the experiment going.
One piece of research I found in the footnote trail suggests that dogs increase self-esteem. This may be a claim too far. When my wife returns home after a day in her office, Kudu puts on a most melodramatic performance, squeaking quite shamelessly in ecstasy. When I get back after long hours in the BBC news factory, I have to be satisfied with a sceptically raised eyebrow and a heavy sigh – small reward for organizing my working day around Kudu’s walking needs, and not at all good for the self-esteem.
Forgive me if this last paragraph is strong meat, but I am assuming only hardened dog-owners will have made it this far. Kudu is generally discreet about doing his morning business, favouring the trunks of trees and the leafy covering of bushes. But last weekend he unloaded his waste in the most spectacular and defiant fashion in the middle of a large group doing Military Fitness on Clapham Common; a rude message to modern faddishness, I feel sure, from all those generations of his ancestors who have kept their owners in good shape down the centuries.
*
When this column came out my dog-loving doctor friend telephoned me to say that she no longer keeps her dog in the consulting room. She had been forced to abandon the arrangement after an unfortunate incident during a cervical smear.
She had, as she delicately put it, just ‘introduced the speculum’ when the dog, which had been snoozing quietly in its corner, had a rabbit-chasing dream and suddenly emitted a prolonged slobbery snuffle. ‘Who have you got hiding in here?’ shrieked the patient as she tried to jam her legs shut – tricky, since my doctor friend was, of course, standing between them at this stage. There was much laughter and no harm done, but since then the dog takes its naps elsewhere in the surgery.
7
Dog Love
DURING AN EMAIL exchange with a BBC colleague I enquired after the health of his Schnauzer, and received the following reply: ‘Dog fine, thanks. She owes me £611 for dental maintenance and removal of a (benign) cyst. Nowadays I brush her teeth with a poultry-flavoured enzyme toothpaste. It has come to this. But I tell all my dog acquaintances to do the same or face large bills …’
The colleague in question is a contemporary; dog-owning definitely takes on a different character when you are middle-aged and your children have turned into young adults. We who have survived the soggy tests of nappy-changing and baby-feeding are more accepting of this kind of humiliation, and probably, though we do not admit it to ourselves, we miss the dependence of small children … and indulge our dogs to fill the void.
There is a revolting newly coined term to describe a dog that performs the role of child substitute: a ‘furkid’. It is usually applied to the sort of miniature, shivering, over-bred and over-dressed toys that super-models and celebrities of the Paris Hilton variety carry about in their handbags – although for some of these types the line between dog as child-substitute and dog as fashion accessory has clearly become dangerously blurred.
One radio presenter – with a regular dog slot in her show – put out a press release to announce the Christmas list she was planning for her Bulldog:
Handmade dog biscuits (£??)
Tuffie Toys – strong enough to withstand a Bulldog’s jaws (£60)
Solid silver ID tag (£25)
A designer collar from Holly & Lil (from £100)
A luxurious new bed from Creature Clothes (£70)
A selection of winter clothes including an Equafleece jumper, tweed coat from Holly & Lil and a hand-knitted pink sweater from New York (£200)
A special festive afternoon tea at the very dog-friendly Milestone Hotel in London with her best friend the Miniature Bull Terrier (£50)
One-on-one training sessions to teach her how to skate-board (£25 per session)
There is alleged to be some science to explain the development of the furkid phenomenon: apparently stroking a dog can provoke women to produce oxytocin, the same ‘happy hormone’ that is released by breast-feeding. Obviously this kind of frivolous tosh is a million miles from the sort of manly, unsentimental and outdoorsy relationship that my BBC colleague and I enjoy with our dogs, and I utterly repudiate any suggestion that Kudu is a furkid.
It is not just children who stir feelings of parental pride
12 June 2010
A neighbour who has recently joined the local dog-walking circle (with a very bouncy young Lab) has been commissioned to make a public sculpture of a Spaniel, and she approached me in the park to ask whether she could sketch some studies of Kudu as her model. This made me feel rather as I imagine Kate Moss’s mum must have felt when she was told that her daughter would be on the cover of Vogue for the first time. I swelled with pride at the thought of the Dog’s fine profile being immortalized in bronze.
Two days later I fell into an ambling conversation with a woman exercising her Jack Russell-Shih Tzu cross on Clapham Common. We spent a bit of time on the fun to be had in naming this surprisingly successful genetic experiment (a Jackshit?) and she then remarked – I am sure without malice – that Kudu’s markings made him look like a cow. Shameful to confess, but I boiled with silent fury.
Quite why one should take pride in one’s dog’s looks I am not sure – it is not as if one can claim any genetic credit, as one can with children. But it is a widespread weakness.
The great Venetian painter Veronese suffered from it so badly that it got him into trouble with the Inquisition. In 1573 he was hauled up to account for certain ‘oddities’ in his vast painting The Supper at the House of Levi: he had slipped his dog into the centre of the canvas, where it gazes admiringly at a self-portrait the artist had also smuggled into the scene. Veronese explained that once he was satisfied that he had told his main narrative in a painting he liked to add ‘figures according to my invention’, if there was any room left, and he compared this to Michelangelo’s use of nude figures in his religious paintings.
‘In Michelangelo,’ came the stern rebuke, ‘thou dost not observe aught but the spiritual, and there are no drunkards, nor dogs, nor arms, nor any such buffooneries.’ Leaving aside what this meant for Veronese (running foul of the Inquisition was a bad move, in those days), it seems rather rough on the dog to be bracketed with drunks and other ‘buffooneries’.
I strive for honesty in evaluating Kudu’s looks. He is a little short in the leg and, although certainly not flabby, a tad on the stout side. If he goes for too long without grooming the big brown marking along his back is bleached to what I am afraid is a gingerish tinge. But when properly looked after he is a m
ix of solid chocolate and milky white, and he is decorative around the house. I have acquired a few nice carpets in the course of my work in the Middle East, and he looks terrific stretched across the deep blues and reds of a Tabriz or a Hamadan rug.
Perhaps it was this happy doggy facility of harmonizing with gorgeous colours that inspired Veronese and several other Venetian painters to use so much dog imagery. The pictures of Veronese’s contemporary Titian are absolutely stuffed with canine cameos.
Titian’s dogs are usually portrayed in focused pursuit of their doggy interests, quite oblivious to the epic religious and mythical dramas unfolding on the canvas around them. In The Last Supper a dog gnaws contentedly at his bone under the table as an anguished Christ predicts his betrayal at the hands of Judas. In the Bacchanal of the Andrians there is a dog begging for titbits from a man at the back of the picture, not bothering even to glance at the wild orgy of binge-drinking and erotic indulgence in the foreground. In the wonderfully titled Venus with Cupid, Dog and a Partridge, a small Spaniel with Kudu-ish colouring is trying to snaffle a bird off a window-ledge, unmoved to be sharing its couch with a disturbingly voluptuous nude with perfectly coiffed hair.
I have once or twice suspected Kudu of posing for effect, so I am reassured by Titian’s idea that dogs go unselfconsciously about their business without worrying too much about the dramas of the humans around them. I am sure he is right, and if Kudu really were vain he surely would not show us his testicles quite so often.
Kudu memorably expressed his own aesthetic sensibility on a walk in Battersea Park. He ran ahead of me and dipped down out of sight, leaving the path to investigate the ducks on the lake. A passing jogger watched his progress and then pulled up, puffing, next to me. ‘I don’t know whether your dog is trying to make a point,’ she said, ‘but he has just crapped on the Barbara Hepworth.’ I am rather fond of the huge, eye-shaped bronze sculpture that stands sentinel by the water’s edge, but Kudu’s gesture would find favour with a certain constituency of art lovers.
Before writing the column above, I researched the subject of dogs and art in the London Library. This venerable institution (it was founded by Thomas Carlyle) is in St James’s Square, in the still handsome heart of London, and offers the sort of subtle pleasures that can only be enjoyed when you have the time to linger over your task. All sorts of truly distinguished authors use it, so there is the thrill of wondering which literary hero you might see at work (everyone dresses with precisely the same degree of stylish dowdiness, mostly in tweed, so the celebs can sometimes be difficult to spot). You can search for your books among the stacks yourself, so there is sometimes the excitement of serendipitously spotting something that perfectly fits your needs. And there is – at least I suspect this – a discreet game of one-upmanship played between the members with the titles they stack at their desks in the Reading Room: the more obscure and erudite your pile looks the better, and you can catch people glancing slyly at their neighbours’ choices while they try to work out the nature of their research.
My pile usually contains titles like The World’s Greatest Dog Stories and Dogs in Literature – these may not be in quite the same league as Structure and Function of the Genitalia of Some American Agelenid Spiders or Snorri Sturlson and the Edda; the conversion of cultural capital in medieval Scandinavia (both real books, honestly) but the doggy theme does have ’em foxed, as it were.
I puzzled for a while over whether to start my research with Dogs or with Art – and was saved by one of those moments of serendipity: I spotted, quite by chance, a book called Dogs in Painting by William Secord. This took me down an avenue of enquiry that had absolutely nothing to do with the task in hand but proved intriguing none the less: there is a very close relationship between the development of dog portraits as a distinctive art form and the abuses that provoked the Bateson Report on breeding (see here).
Before the nineteenth century the concept of a breed was a relaxed one. The idea that particular kinds of dogs were suited to particular tasks has, of course, been around since the earliest days of dog-time – there is a famous seventeenth-century picture called The Sleeping Sportsman, which includes a sporting dog that is a dead ringer for Kudu – but there were no codes laying down what an ideal member of a breed should look like, and no one was much fussed about doggy family trees. And when dogs featured in pre-nineteenth-century British and European art they were generally adjuncts to the main event – providing extra colour or, in the Titian and Veronese manner, a dramatic device.
Queen Victoria changed all that. She was famously devoted to animals; she became patron of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals as a princess in 1835 (giving the organization its ‘R’ prefix) and declared that ‘No civilization is complete which does not include the dumb and defenceless of God’s creatures within the sphere of charity and mercy.’ She was especially fond of dogs and kept extensive kennels in Windsor Great Park, where she also maintained a small house from which she could watch her numerous dogs being brought out to play by the kennel man.
A photograph of one of the rooms in what became known as ‘the Queen’s Cottage’ shows the walls completely covered with dog portraits. In 1836, just before Victoria’s accession to the throne, the artist Edwin Landseer was commissioned to paint a portrait of Dash, her black-and-white King Charles Spaniel, for her eighteenth birthday, and it was the beginning of a lifelong passion for dog portraits.
Victoria’s love of her dogs set the tone for the nation’s canine culture, and her enthusiasm for having them painted effectively established a new art form. Britain was becoming richer, and dog-owning for pleasure became more widespread with the growth of a newly leisured class. With that came a snobby new interest in breed purity: it was suddenly fashionable to have a dog with a pedigree, and the Victorian writer Gordon Stables (a popular author of improving boys’ adventure stories and, towards the end of his career, of a book called The Dog: From Puppyhood to Age) remarked in 1877 that ‘Now nobody who is anybody can afford to be followed about with a mongrel dog.’
The first formal dog show took place in Newcastle in 1859. One of the judges was a certain Dr John Henry Walsh, the editor of the Field magazine, and a few years later he published his seminal work The Dogs of the British Isles, the first attempt to codify the ideal qualities of individual breeds. The Kennel Club was established in 1873 and produced its first official stud book a year later.
Charles Cruft was a key figure in the development of the Victorian canine culture. He began his dog career working as a clerk for James Spratt of Cincinnati, the first manufacturer of dog biscuits (when he opened a London branch, Spratt used Landseer pictures to promote his merchandise, and Victoria granted his company a royal warrant) but soon moved on to establish his eponymous shows. His breakthrough came when he persuaded Queen Victoria to show some of her pedigrees (her Collie and six Pomeranians, called Fluffy, Nino, Mino, Beppo, Gilda and Lulu). Unsurprisingly, given the deferential culture of the day, they all won prizes – and the modern tradition of the pedigree dog show was truly up and running. And, of course, those who won in Mr Cruft’s shows wanted to have their dogs immortalized in dog portraits – just like the Queen’s champions.
Victoria would, one feels sure, have been horrified by the way subsequent generations of breeders pursued prizes at the expense of canine health in the way Professor Bateson so shockingly described in his 2010 report (though I fear she might not have been entirely sound in the matter of furkids). She was a genuine dog-lover, and withdrew her own dogs from competition because there was an outbreak of distemper in her kennels shortly after the Crufts outing. But the evidence that the worship of breed purity was damaging dogs began to emerge very early. In 1911 the Hon. Mrs Neville Lytton wrote a book called Toy Dogs and Their Ancestors Including the History and Management of Toy Spaniels, Pekingese, Japanese and Pomeranians in which she reflected on the way modern breeding was distorting natural selection:
Nature ruthlessly destroys the weak
lings, the weeds, and the failures. The conditions of life are too uncompromising and they must die. The modern man preserves them at infinite trouble and expense and offers prizes for them on the show bench. He breeds from individuals who would never naturally breed, which are too small, too feeble, or too deformed to propagate their species in a natural condition, and, moreover, often have a violent aversion in doing so. This is a grievous mistake.
Breeding must count for something: Mrs Lytton was the granddaughter of that other great dog fancier, Lord Byron.
I am getting the silent treatment – and couldn’t be happier
26 June 2010
While I am reporting from abroad I treasure the odd fix of Kudu-news when I phone home: there is something soothing about his trivial triumphs and disasters, especially when I am working somewhere rough. But it turns out he does not reciprocate the sentiment.
I have recently returned from ten days in Kyrgyzstan. One of my stories was being broadcast on the Today programme while my wife was driving to Clapham Common for the daily walk, and she loyally waited in the car with the radio on until the piece was finished. Kudu would have none of it: he gave the radio a head-butt and turned me off, demanding to be released for his run.
There is a famous story about the Russian actor Stanislavski, who used to keep his dog with him during rehearsals. It would sleep through the performance and only woke up when the actors were finished; Stanislavski claimed this showed the dog could tell when everyone had reverted to their ‘real’ personas. Evidently on the radio I am not real enough to detain Kudu from the urgent business that demands his attention whenever he sees a patch of green.
Diary of a Dog-walker Page 10