Looking upon the pitiful creature, I became almost as outraged as my charges. What kind of madness had inspired the aberration before us? Why select for a particular coat color and foot shape but ignore an essential like the brain? Less than a century ago, determined to get dogs right, fanciers set about working on “the conversion of a domestic animal into a living advertisement of man’s eccentricities,” as canine critic William Arkwright complained to the British Kennel Club. Creators of this and many other “purebreds” seemed to enjoy nothing more than “promoting the length of ear at the expense of flesh.”2 Canine monstrosities, like circus freaks, attracted crowds. Show dogs performed tricks, usually without moving at all. Their colors changed as though by magic, and eyes waxed and waned on command. Legs stretched and retracted like rubber bands at the wave of a wand. How far would the wolf in every dog have to go to please the people? How many hoops would be placed in his path?
Dogs eventually given the name “golden retriever” weren’t yet available to the general public when Mr. Arkwright wrote his critique of these new dog shows in 1888. An early model, in a darker shade that would be disqualified today, was the property of an elite group of landed aristocrats who still used their dogs for retrieving birds. Their coats had not yet grown to their present length, which is so ridiculously long and luxuriant that moving through brush without tripping or being entangled would be quite a performance, indeed. At that time, it wasn’t the golden retriever that occupied center stage but rather the new and improved collie, a dog of similar coloring that had caught the fancy’s fancy. After only a few years in the ring, this breed had strayed far from its progenitor, a hardy working dog whose predominant coat color had been black like coal—thus the name “coaley,” so the story goes.3 Audiences weren’t satisfied with a roughly similar type of dog proven for generations as tried and true, an individual with variable coloring but a solid character and a unique set of talents. In no time at all, show business transformed this animal into a breed and turned the coat from black to “golden sable and white.”4 A humble herder and hard worker became a big, fair-haired fur ball with “an enormous head, an enormous coat, and enormous limbs.”5 This theatrical version would become “Lassie” in the next century, and heroes never wore black.
Consumers wanted identical copies, and so the breeders refashioned the collie to look more like the trendy dogs of the day. To maximize the response and broaden the appeal, they gave him the pointed head of a borzoi, a snooty sort with a Roman nose known to be on an intimate footing with royalty. They took this revamped head with a beak that made the dog look like an anteater and screwed it onto “the clumsy bone of a St. Bernard,” a recent arrival on the social scene being used to guard elegant country mansions. Not content with having made the traditional collie into a Frankenstein composite of other show types, “they have commenced to graft on to the breed the jaw of an alligator, the coat of an Angoran goat,” Arkwright remarked as if judging a bad work of art.6 The noble herder became a laughing stock among many farmers, but the city folk liked him just fine.
Arkwright may have been right on the mark about collies. But he failed to understand that making things appear as they were not in real life was the whole point of show business. Where was the fun in reality? The fancy came into full force during the golden age of circuses, freak shows, and world’s fairs. Audiences had acquired a taste for illusion and demanded that dogs be something more than just dogs. Collies weren’t the only animals being reissued as theatrical versions of their former selves.
As we’ve already seen, enterprising showmen showed their showmanship by rebuilding the bulldog, a type that was deliberately crippled to assume the tough stance of another animal altogether, the bull he once fought in the ring. Those extreme skin folds were only added as decorative flourishes years after the fact, retroactively given the elaborate purpose of allowing the bull’s blood to flow neatly down the face. Old engravings of bulldogs show no such feature. It is a common tactic in the fancy to invent intricate, technical-sounding reasons for breeding dogs to look striking on stage, though the elaborateness of these explanations are often grounds for suspicion. Other dogs would step into the limelight and be remade for dramatic effect.
Today’s so-called “fox terrier” was no different from our so-called “Parson Russell Terrier” until quite recently when he was given a laughably long nose to draw attention to what these small diggers used to do for a living before being thrust into the arena. A Pinocchio story if ever there was one, this tale of exaggerated snout size was pure fantasy because no dog ever needed this appendage to hit pay dirt and corner a fox.7 Pushing the envelope for other breeds, skulls have kept enlarging to keep the crowds coming back. The dachsy’s back has grown to absurd lengths relative to its ever stumpier legs, giving the judges something more to measure.
The German shepherd was invented in the 1890s as a symbol of Teutonic purity, but changed dramatically when he became a show dog, and even more when he was recast for the silver screen. Audiences were so impressed by his role as Rin Tin Tin that breeders crushed his hind legs and froze him permanently into the statuesque pose that everyone knew and loved. Lassie go home. Perhaps to distract from the dog’s wolfish demeanor and Nazi ties, and to make him look more like a war hero, front legs were left straight, as though planted firmly on a rock like a sentry. Hind legs were bent and lowered unnaturally to the ground, which produced a dragging effect when he tried to walk but kept the body in this inclined position. The ultimate effect was that of a dog gazing out over some imaginary valley below. Audiences continue to expect this pose today, even though keeping it causes endless agony to the dog himself. The iconic stance of Rin Tin Tin played no small role in giving the German shepherd this crippling deformity of the hind legs.
The German shepherd, or “frog dog,” recently made a comeback in New York City, where he was painted in stars-and-stripes and hauled out as a statue of a search-and-rescue dog surveying the crater of 9/11 in exactly the same pose, complete with rock. But dog show people aren’t alone in overdramatizing for appearance. Men who have employed dogs for more traditional purposes, such as hunting or tracking, are also sometimes guilty of stretching the truth on the usefulness of certain exaggerated features. The long and droopy cartoon ears on the bloodhound, for example, which hunters still insist are needed to somehow trap a scent securely from a passing breeze, are likely not as indispensible as we’ve been led to believe. “Consider this,” says hunting writer Patrick Burns. “Most professional Search and Rescue dogs, where human life is in the swing, are not Bloodhounds or any other type of long-eared ‘wrinkle beast’—they are German Shepherds or Retrievers, Malinois or Border Collies.”8
The fancy treats dogs as works of art or entertainment. Flesh and bone are sculpted in surprising and scintillating ways, esthetically pleasing to some people but never intended by nature. Cracking the whip at the helm of creation like a ringmaster, changing the outward forms of the animal kingdom at will—this is the work of fanciful minds who, for all their imagination, still insist on predictable, assembly-line perfection. Not only are some cookie-cutter dogs packaged to look as unlike heinous wolves as possible, they’re often not allowed to look like dogs, either.
“Don’t let us turn them into dogs,” wrote a Pekingese fancier in the 1930s when these queer little bug-eyed beings were the darlings of high society. Let them have butterfly ears, cat tails, monkey faces—let them be anything but those dirty mongrels that roam the streets, picking through garbage, and acting rudely toward their lion-coated superiors. Give them, instead, “grotesquely enormous eyes, like some weird Chinese monster of another world.”9 Let them be anything, so long as they’re not dogs. Until very recently, when fanciers were confronted with irrefutable evidence of a dog’s shady past and his true relationship to the wolf, it was still possible to imagine all sorts of stories. Family trees could sprout from any crack and grow in all directions. The more reasonable theories held that if a dog was not descended from a
wolf, then he likely came from the fox, coyote, or jackal, or some combination of the three, which would still be less odious than pure Canis lupus. Over the centuries, other animals would be added to the menagerie. Dogs would be expected to mimic them like multiple personalities.
As we’ve seen, it was widely believed that dogs had mated with different species to give them their wide variety of outward forms. Apparently, they’d been delivered undiluted from God in biblical times and must have interbred with bears at some point to become the larger breeds and crossed with foxes to become smaller dogs of the terrier type. One pre-Linnaean treatise, Topsell’s seventeenth-century bestiary, The History of Four-Footed Beasts, discussed real animals side-by-side with unicorns, dragons, sphinxes, and satyrs.
The entire animal kingdom has been mixed and matched, as it was in ancient times when beasts were imagined in the most unlikely combinations. Gorgons in Greek mythology were believed to have wings of gold, brass claws, boar tusks, and serpent skin and fangs. Chimeras had fire-breathing lioness heads, goat heads, or snake heads. Hindu Garudas were both man and bird. Ganeshas had elephant heads and human bodies. Indian Buddhist lions had canine heads. Pegasus was a winged horse. Cerberus was a dog with three heads that worked in unison, like my terrier trio, to guard the gates of Hades. Prior to modern classification based on the more plausible theory of evolution, the sky was the limit and people had ample room for wild imaginings. “There is a four-footed beast called the sea-wolf,” Topsell explained to bedazzled readers who hadn’t traveled far from home. “This beast lives both on sea and land.”10 So-called “sea-dogs” appeared as heraldic symbols for centuries, like the strange pair of canine hybrids with fish scales on their backs seen on the Stourton family crest from 1790.11 “The Arcadian dogs are said to be generated of lions,” Topsell also recounted in his bestiary, which included many monstrous mixes.12 “The dogs of India are conceived by tigers, for the Indians will take divers females or bitches and fasten them to trees in woods where tigers abide.”13 Similarly, on mastiffs, Caius wrote, “They are sayd to have their generation of the violent Lion.”14 Over four centuries later, Lloyd suggested this legend of a cat-dog was still alive and well by describing the Staffordshire terrier as having “tiger-like muscles, with the prowess of a lion.”15 Bulldogs, the Staffordshire’s cousins, have been admired for heads that resemble either tigers or lions, depending on the observer. Frightening as the thought may be, ancient myths have influenced the way we see dogs and the way we force them to breed true to form. Fact merges with legend, and separating the two, at this late date, can be quite difficult. That tall tale from the early nineteenth century about the bulldog having his paws sawed off during a baiting session may, in fact, be traceable to some forgotten belief in tiger-dogs.
“Thus come these valorous dogs,” Topsell explained, “which retain the shape and proportion of their mother.” Cats crossed with canines were believed to be powerhouses and champion fighting dogs to owe their strength of body and character to the feline half. Alexander the Great himself, according to Topsell, who recounted the legend, was impressed by these unions and became an avid arranger of matches with tiger-dogs “to try what virtue was contained in so great a body.” Perhaps mastiffs, these champions were set against bears and boars, it was said, and finally a lion, the most powerful beast—the king of beasts—in the royal menagerie. To Alexander’s amazement, even the supreme predator was no match for the tiger-dog, which latched onto the lion’s snout—as a bulldog might have seized a bull—and wouldn’t release despite whipping and prodding. Several strong men failed to loosen the tiger-dog’s grip, so the legend continued, and Alexander ordered them to cut off his tail but with no effect. A leg was severed, then another, and another, until “the trunk of his body fell to the ground” with the tiger-dog’s mouth still attached to the lion’s snout. Even after decapitation, “the bodiless head still hung fast to the lion’s jaws.” What a performance! “The King was wonderfully moved and sorrowfully repented his rashness in destroying a beast of so noble spirit, which could not be daunted with the presence of the king of beasts.”16
Lions, tigers, and bears—any animal was nobler than the lowly wolf. We ought to know better today when a species is defined as an animal that mates with others of its kind to produce fertile offspring, as dogs and wolves are still very capable of doing. Yet we can’t seem to shake our habit of expecting dogs to be something more. This age-old tradition of seeing canines as composites of other species is stuck somewhere deep inside our brains. Any number of impossible unions are drawn into the fancy’s fantasies. Any species is fair game. Much of the animal kingdom has been pickled and preserved in the literature and, more importantly, in the breed standards, the very recipes that still determine how pets are bred to look. Breeds like the collie are, indeed, shaped into alligator-goats, and this is just the tip of the unicorn’s horn. Myth has become reality. Shar-peis and chow chows are produced in “bear coat.” Pugs are available in “fawn.” The Catahoula Leopard Dog is known for its feline spots, and bulldogs are expected to have “tiger-like shortness of the head” and keep their famous bullish stance.17
Sick or strange as it may seem to make one species look like others, a recurrent theme provides a partial explanation: an animal is often confused with its enemies. Perhaps dogs are wearing bits and pieces of other creatures as trophies of war or coats of arms. This might be said of any breed that sports a tawny cape resembling a lion’s. Rhodesian ridgebacks, also known as “African lion hounds,” have coats in a leonine shade, and their body shape has often been seen through a lion lens. Marco Polo is popularly quoted as saying the Tibetan mastiff was as “tall as a donkey with a voice as powerful as a lion.” The short-haired mastiff wears what the fancy still calls a “tiger head.” The long-haired version has a “lion head.”
Laboratory experiments gone bad, sideshow freaks, fantastic creatures born of poetic comparisons, perhaps on the island of Doctor Moreau, today’s official breeds are odd assemblages of so many bits and pieces. While Victorian zookeepers were busy crossing lions with tigers and horses with zebras, and domestic interiors featured elephant feet as umbrella stands and goats’ heads as lamps, the dog fancy was mixing and matching species in styles that are still very much with us today. Stitched together with the parts of other animals, purebred dogs aren’t treated so much as living, breathing, sentient beings as they are crafted to be like furniture or decorative objects. Many a gilded lion’s paw has been attached to a chair and table. Rhinoceros horns and deer hooves have managed to find their ways onto settees, divans, and chandeliers. Objets have been decorated with fish scales, dolphin heads, and bird beaks. Who hasn’t heard of a “claw-foot” bathtub or a “wing-back” chair?
Dogs have been designed in precisely the same way. Fur is called “feather” and any extra is “furnishing” in the show ring—or is it a showroom? The longer growth on bellies of setters, long-haired pointers, cocker spaniels, and other breeds is called “fringe,” and ears are known as “leather.” When discussing bone structure, the customary term is “timber,” and excess flesh is “lumber.” Several dwarf breeds with a deformity called achondroplasia are said to have “benched” or “Queen Anne” legs. Bulldogs and collies are done in “tortoise shell,” perhaps to make them look like inlaid snuffboxes. Labradors, boxers, cocker spaniels, Gordon setters, and others are expected to have “chiseled” heads. Greyhounds, on the other hand (or foot), have long been admired for their “snake” heads and “drake” necks. Shar-peis have “hippopotamus” heads, while those on papillons and Pekingeses are made to resemble “butterflies”—not to be confused with the “butterfly” nose featuring a patchy coloration that was “decidedly objectionable” to the Bulldog Club of America in 1914. A spotted snout is also grounds for disqualification for the Labrador retriever, though he is expected to have an “otter” tail. Queen Elizabeth’s corgis don’t look anything like their working ancestors, with the faux “fox” heads sewn on in recent years, and other b
reeds have “bull” necks, “ewe” necks, “goose” necks, and “pig” mouths. Long-haired strains of certain breeds have “bear coat” and shorter versions wear “horse coat.” Poodles are groomed in a number of styles including “fox,” “lamb,” “lion,” and “Teddy bear.”
The very term “pedigree” comes from another animal, because a family tree resembles a crane’s foot, or pied de grue. But whether cannibalized canines are works of fine art or butchered messes that look kind of creepy, it’s difficult to deny that they’re inbred, groomed, and mutilated to look like mythical beings. Dogs are given the same decorative flourishes as inanimate objects manufactured for esthetic effects. Humans have historically seen nonhuman animals as reflections of themselves, like the figures on heraldic shields or the logos for the Lions Club, the Elks Club, the Loyal Order of Moose, or the Mickey Mouse Club. From among the many creatures we’ve chosen to mirror ourselves, certain themes recur more often than others. Added to the schizophrenic circus is one of the lion’s few contenders among the “noble” animals, the horse with its known ties to equestrian classes. Greyhounds, Italian greyhounds, Afghans, borzois, whippets, wolfhounds, and the like are valued for their equine form. Terms for dog anatomy in the ring are often borrowed from the horsey set, and one hoity-toity strain of foxhound is said to wear a “saddle mark” upon its back.
In the fancy’s unending quest for the perfect pet, more often than not the focus has been on individual parts rather than the whole. Animals, vegetation, dinnerware, rare jewels—there’s no limit to what can be done. Chow chows, for example, are said to have “diamond” eyes (due to turned-in eyelids, often requiring surgery).18 Ears and tails figure prominently in the standards and can be a breed’s defining characteristics. The Pembroke Welsh corgi has “small, catlike ears,” while those on the Frenchie, as we’ve seen, must be “bat” and not “rose.” “Tulip” ears are allowed on some breeds, cocker spaniels were once required to have theirs “vine-shaped,” and “trowel” ears complete the allegory of an English country garden. Fox terriers are made with “button” ears that are semi-prick. Ears that stand completely erect are more wolflike, and some people prefer them cute and floppy. Breeders in the nineteenth century tried to package limp ears as a sign of trainability and loyalty, though upright ears might have served dogs better for the hunt. Cropped Doberman pinschers still manage to intimidate man and dog alike with their devilish horns. A “pit bull” with ears sculpted by a razor inspires pedestrians to take the other side of the street. But if a Boston terrier, his civilized cousin, doesn’t have ears erect, he stands to be corrected. For ears not “prick” enough, blowing a horn in the show ring has been another way to get their attention.
A Matter of Breeding Page 12