Keepers of the keys to good breeding were poised to tap into delusions of grandeur through pet ownership, and in a single stroke of marketing genius, the AKC exploited the growing resentment over foreign influences and, at the same time, social insecurities at home. The AKC was doing some soul searching of its own. Originally an elite social club founded for the enjoyment of the ultra-rich, it was turning into a business, a proper corporation that sold not so much quality as the concept of quality through breeding. Sponsors of the dapper dog made the same career move as clothing designers today who expand from impractical, limited-edition couturier catering to a select clientele to off-the-rack items for a mass market always eager to imitate. Americans wanted a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage, and having a pedigree pooch in every parlor was not unlike owning a Model T, a working man’s stab at leisure vehicles. While the world waited for the Boston Terrier Club to produce a dog worthy of its breed club’s name, the AKC took a keen interest in cultivating the half-bred hound into something presentable. Versed mainly in English types that arrived from great distances prefabricated with breeding instructions included, the elders kept an arm’s length and provided advice and support in every step of the mutation from mongrel that anyone could have into purebred everyone would want, from mutt into must-have.
“This was the first new breed to come before the Kennel Club,” the Gazette recalled in 1924, “and with all the pride of a mother over her first born, the club intended to be assured that the newcomer was eugenically perfect.”14 The Boston terrier was the AKC’s protégé, its own private label, a signature brand to promote for decades. The breed would generate a fortune for the registry in its formative years. “In 1891, the Boston Terrier was an experiment,” the Gazette explained. “But once recognized as a regular breed, its fortunes ran parallel with those of the AKC. It became a firm financial friend of the governing body and during many years it has been, through the registration fees, a large, if not the largest, contributor to the treasury of the club.”15 That organization’s rise from small shabby-chic offices lined with dull filing cabinets, to deluxe digs on Madison Avenue currently housing one of the finest canine art collections in the world, owes a heavy debt to the sustained success of the two-toned tyke.
Now if only Americans could agree on what, exactly, it meant to be a “gentleman,” or a “lady” for that matter. Breediness was never born in a vacuum, and the question of who, or what, deserved special privileges needed to be answered. Dogs were valued for reflecting their owners’ social standing, and vice versa. Who should have the pleasure of looking down on those with nothing in their laps: Mrs. Ritz-Carlton or her driver? The initial impulse was to say: both. Axtell the commercial breeder proclaimed universally in 1900, “I think this breed appeals to a wider class of people than any other breed, from a man of wealth who produces puppies to be given away as wedding presents or Christmas gifts, down to the lone widow, or the man incapacitated for hard work.” Axtell and his ilk packaged the Boston terrier as a product of industry and thrift, a kind of local boy made good and a way to earn some extra cash. “A Boston without a good tail is almost as worthless as a check without a signature,” he cautioned aspiring entrepreneurs once the brand became official, and average Americans were encouraged to become what we would disapprovingly call “backyard breeders” today. By taking part in a more open and democratic production of prizewinning pedigrees, any man, woman, or child of any social station, it was said, could at long last achieve breediness on their own, heaping prestige on their households and helping to “fill the pocketbook,” “gladden the eye,” and “keep the wolf from the door.”16 All it took was a modest investment—and a small registration fee per pup payable to the AKC—to transform humble kitchens, garages, and toolsheds into royal kennels.
So who would it be: Mrs. Ritz-Carlton or her driver? Fanciers couldn’t have it both ways—or could they? For reasons as conflicted as human motives are, all this talk of graduating from stable to carriage didn’t kill this dog’s democratic draw. As with canine crowning and breeding for blood “purity” and elitist “perfection,” aristocracy and meritocracy could at best cohabitate uncomfortably like the two-toned markings on a Boston’s back. Following a pattern popular since the invention of constitutional monarchy, the idea was never to do away with English-style snobbery—God forbid—but to salvage its spirit for future generations to enjoy. It was no accident that Anglophile gentlemen, born-and-bred rich kids affiliated with Harvard and the Harvard Club, were first to step up and sponsor a breed that didn’t, technically, exist quite yet.17 The true order of their concerns was revealed with their intention to secure “recognition as a distinct breed”—whether this meant the breed club’s gentlemen or the ideal dog they hadn’t yet produced was unclear—“and this we can only do by proving that we have one.”18
The AKC greeted the applicants with open arms when they asked for recognition, sympathizing with their cause and nurturing their vision of a house pet with no other purpose than to be born meeting its standard. The Stud Book Committee’s first task in ushering them on the path to perfection was to choose a name for the club and the breed it would be called upon to produce. Self-promoters had introduced themselves as the “American Bull Terrier Club,” a variation on an established English breed and club, both of which would be taken by someone else in 1897. “Boston” made more sense, with a newer but noble ring, suggesting dyed-in-the-wool WASPiness and hinting at Mayflower descent. Dropping this name in public places would anchor any owner instantly in history—who would want to be associated with a Cleveland terrier? Aristocratic pets were tied to the land, and not just any location, another tactic borrowed from the English, whose own Kennel Club was carving up the Land of Fancy into West Highland, Shetland, Lakeland, Yorkshire, Airedale, Staffordshire, Norfolk, Norwich, Sealyham, Pembroke, Cardigan, Ireland, Wales—not to mention England, Scotland, and the border in between—each of these alluding to places, breeds, breed clubs, and corresponding coat colors.19
The AKC’s role in deciding the breed standard for the Boston terrier—years before it assumed control over standards for any breeds it registers and shows—should put to sleep supporters’ usual argument that only breed clubs, not the registry, have legal ownership of the standards and reforming them is not the AKC’s business. Securing sponsorship from the right class of people, inheriting an arbitrary set of features based on pure esthetics (and odd ones at that) selected with complete disregard for health and sound construction—the most calculated makeover could still fail if unsavory items from a canine candidate’s social background reared their ugly heads. The dog desirous of the AKC’s imprimatur had an embarrassing bone buried in his family closet, and that bone was English. “It is supposed that this dog was imported, but nothing is known as to his breeding,” Watson recalled, “though he was undoubtedly of the half-bred bull and terrier type used for fighting.”20 The problem was, too much was known of this dog’s breeding, and a change in ear style was not going to do the trick.
“Our little aristocrat”21 was, indeed, recently descended from the fighting dogs the English had bred for centuries, and early photos bear an uncanny resemblance to what any law enforcement official or man on the street would call a “pit bull” today! In fact, the American lapdog would probably be sharing that name were it not for the purebred whitewashing received just over a century ago. Common sense suggests a good many more dogs of the bull and terrier type must have been arriving before “Hooper’s Judge” was selectively enshrined as Dog Adam in the AKC breed history. These animals, and their owners, were probably up to no good. As with the Pekingese breed and nobility’s “Fabulous Five,” propped up as pretenders to a dynasty of lion-dogs on British soil and remembered only at their best addresses—later found never to have mated22—we may never know the whole story about America’s court dog. The breed’s luster fades in light of the fact that these dogs likely became popular in the Boston area because humane laws pertaining to dog fighting wer
e more stringently enforced in New York at the time.23
“To come down to the hard-pan truth, the dog was originally a pit terrier,” Watson was forced to admit. “That was his only vocation as a man’s dog, and it would be impossible to find one man in the club who would now make use of him that way. That day is past entirely and the only thing to consider is the future of the dog.”24 The way to sever this dog’s “disreputable associations,”25 the fancy wanted buyers to believe, was to change his associates and his address. A Boston couldn’t be a court dog unless he was accepted as a house pet, and so all the standard clichés were rolled out to flatter prospective pet owners by insisting that a large part of inheritance came from environment. Like purveyors of golden retrievers who swear that no dog with ancestors from a Scottish estate would ever bite, and owners who proudly predict their goldens would “show the burglars where to find the silver”—meaning their family has a set worth stealing—early promoters claimed Bostons wouldn’t disturb anyone’s peace by barking because they weren’t guard dogs. Bostons were said to be affectionate, “the most intelligent, observing, and discriminating of all breeds,” the clichés unfurled. They were easily housebroken, had “peculiar reasoning power,” and were guaranteed to “grow in grace,” provided they kept the right human company. The “gentleman” dog was a perfect “companion for ladies” who could walk this refined creature with pinkies extended and a parasol in the other hand. “Boston Terriers are not aggressive to other dogs,” a Dr. J. Varnum Mott argued, “hence the injuries sustained as a result of fighting are very few and far between.”26 This guy obviously had never met Marge and Eunice with their war-torn coats.
If, indeed, some dogs were aggressive, it was due to unsavory social ties. And who would choose to be seen with an ex-con canine but a man who was himself a criminal? The taste for violence indulged in the fighting pits of old, explained Freeman Lloyd, the AKC’s official British accent, was unique to the lower, subterranean classes. “It is strange that miners, generally, are affected with these rough, and often wicked tastes,” read the Gazette article, buttressed by ads for kennels placed prominently in the margins. “Some there are who say that such men, spending most of their time without the benefit of sunshine, become addicted to the darker and lower amusements.”27 According to Lloyd’s theory, society’s dregs lacked the benefits of fresh air, scenic landscapes, better company, and flattering light—unlike the upper classes that swore off animal baiting but kept the terrier half of fighting dogs for civilized pursuits like fox hunting. Meanwhile, dog fighting was declared unsporting, but the bulldog in the Boston stood on shaky ground.
Rule number one from the Social Climber’s Handbook: once you’re in the front door, slam it shut before any unrefined relatives come sniffing around. Bulldogs were reformed gladiators from defamed leisure activities. They’d barely gotten as far as the parlor by the excess skin on their exaggerated under-bites and, in many minds, were still on probation, when their close cousin the Boston came knocking for recognition. Crossbred with pug court dogs, as Bostons would soon be softened with hues of the fashionable Frenchie, bulldogs were still struggling with some shady family history. They’d been granted entry to better homes where they lounged like “a Pug of high degree lolls in a draper’s window, beside a large black cat,”28 but they sat there uneasily, and the cat looked nervous. Bulldogs had been crippled to a snail’s pace, perhaps to reassure people that they were no longer a threat. But an extremely gaseous nature, due to the poor design of the torso, made them awkward around the house, and constant flatulence meant they often slept on the front porch. Owners who didn’t shut them out slept with one eye open for an animal they didn’t fully trust, despite the fancy papers, the unlikelihood of strenuous activity without heart attacks, and constant assurances of “predictable” behavior.
The bulldog’s position was at best precarious, and this was not the time to be digging up questions of breeding. Its club no more wanted to be associated with Bostons than the Boston’s club wanted to be associated with them! “Especially bitter were the members of the newly formed Bulldog Club of America,” the Gazette recalled, and having fair-born patrons from riding circles only cushioned the blow when the gentleman dog ran into a hurdle on his way to purebred standing. “In the recognition of the Boston they thought they saw a menace to their own respective breed. In a small way the antagonism was increased through a press campaign which attempted to show that the bulldog, as a breed, was unfit for gentle society.” The sudden appearance of a close relation from the old country, but from the wrong side of the tracks, was embarrassing bulldog backers who were quick to retaliate by calling the Boston—and by implication, any owner—the “savage animal.”29
Separating the terrier from the bulldog in animals of this type was a delicate operation because “our dogs of guilt,” as Roger Caras called fighting types of old, had a shared heritage and bore a striking resemblance to one another.30 In fact, former fighters had been lumped into the same canine class for years at the dog shows. “Round Heads,” the name given to pregentrified Bostons, were often mixed indiscriminately with bulldogs and bull terriers, and any member of this clan would be labeled a “pit bull” today. “Lovers of dogs for their own sakes,” on the other hand, said the Times—meaning, for the prestige they lent to respectable households—and amateurs of these “business dogs” strolled down separate aisles before competitions began. Softer, civilized breeds, the canine dudes, were segregated into different doggy neighborhoods at the shows, and viewers were advised on which blocks of cages were best avoided. Blunt-skulled bullies didn’t occupy those elegant “apartments” so “gorgeously furnished with carpets, curtains, ribbons, and even mirrors.”31
Conspicuously displayed apart from poofed-up hairballs that could be “annihilated in a single kick,”32 bulldogs and their relations kept to themselves. Their cages were Spartan and securely locked, not to keep thieves out but to keep apparent monsters in. “The vicious-looking bull-dogs kept up a continual snarling,” the Times reported,
and there was no doubt some reason for the “dangerous” notice over their kennels. Nobody ventured to pat them on the heads; visitors were content to look at them from a safe distance, and reflect upon what dangerous and unfriendly-looking brutes they were. There were some fine specimens of bulls, but none of them were troubled with beauty. Their little mashed-in noses looked pugger than ever as they drew up their upper lips and said suggestively to passers-by that they would like to take hold of their legs.33
Just as segregation served to keep different canine classes in their proper places, the way to change a dog’s identity was to change his address. The bulldog already had a foot in the door when the Boston came knocking, because Americans’ constant fear of not imitating the English had convinced them to give the brute a second chance. To be linked to finer property was, by definition, to cease being stray and disorderly, and the Boston was in dire need of a niche of his own. An early breeder of pure-white Round Heads had shown it was possible to harness his dogs’ inborn aggression for nobler pursuits, namely, for chasing strays off finer farm land. “And woe to any kind of vermin or vagrant curs that showed themselves,” Axtell warned all trespassers.34 Good dogs knew their property lines and they stuck to them. In fact, one of the AKC’s sales pitches was that “the Boston is not given to wanderlust, like so many of our other breeds. He seems to feel that ‘there’s no place like home.’” What dog would want to leave a good address but one that didn’t belong there? “Never once have I seen them astray off the estate,”35 a supremely pretentious writer for the Gazette described Bostons inhabiting a fashionable stretch in New York’s very horsey Westchester County. As with other luxury breeds linked to desirable spots, saying a dog felt no need to roam implied the owner had a well-stocked estate from which he should never wish to wander. The notion that good dogs kept better addresses, as we’ve seen on other stops across the Land of Fancy, was as old as aristocracy. Gordon Stables restaked that claim for pets
“looking pleased and happy, and but seldom caring to leave their own well-kept lawns, unless to make a rush at a stray cat, or bark at a butcher’s Collie.”36
Disagreements over whether to accept the Boston terrier into the pedigree pantheon were finally resolved with the AKC’s guidance. “Then, as a good canine citizen, the Bulldog Club fell into line and welcomed the little stranger,” the Gazette recalled that fateful year of 1893 when, after fierce resistance, the new dog’s future looked made in the shade.37 “The two old standard breeds of world-wide reputation, the English bulldog and the bull terrier,” Axtell elaborated, “had to be joined to make a third which we believe to be the peer of either, and the superior of both.”38 The Boston terrier assumed his position in the window next to the cat and became the number-one breed in the United States and Canada for many years. Perhaps the initial reluctance was to be expected. “The answer probably lies,” the Gazette explained, “in the fact that in those stirring times the American Fancy was young. And young blood always is hot blood. Also it lacks the ability to form accurate and correct opinions.”39
The AKC acted as chaperone and peacemaker to assure the hurried inbreeding, and the ad hoc selection of traits that made Bostons a breed apart from the rest paid off to the benefit of Americans hoping to be taken seriously on a global scale. It was in everyone’s interest to set aside differences on coat color, tail shape, and so on, and show the world America’s newfound breeding abilities. The homegrown aristocrat walked the same path as the bulldog and “was taken into the house on trial. His manner proved, though his birth might have been humble, that his instincts were those of a gentleman, so in the house he remained.”40 Once the dog became a permanent fixture, the Boston Terrier Club united under the banner of one universal standard. Axtell and other breeders, industrial and cottage industry, had the blueprint they needed to start production on the gentleman dog with a view to produce prizewinners.
A Matter of Breeding Page 17