“THE FAITHFUL HOUND”
who was unaccountably absent. On Llewelyn’s return, the truant stained and smeared with blood, joyfully sprang to meet his master. The prince alarmed hastened to find his son, and saw the infant’s cot empty, the bedclothes and floor covered with blood. The frantic father plunged his sword into the hound’s side thinking it had killed his heir. The dog’s dying yell was answered by a child’s cry. Llewelyn searched and discovered his boy unharmed. But near by lay the body of a mighty wolf which Gelert had slain. The prince filled with remorse is said never to have smiled again. He buried Gelert here. The spot is called
BEDDGELERT
I wouldn’t want to argue with a proud Welshman about the truth of this touching tale, which has been often repeated in books and articles and is told to every tourist. But, unfortunately, there’s no proof that such an event ever happened, and prototypical stories about a variety of misunderstood helpful animals go back before the Middle Ages and were recorded first in the Middle East. One nineteenth-century English folklorist called Gelert “a mythical dog” and referred to the story as being “primeval [and] told with many variations.” Recently, a brave Welsh historian dubbed the Gelert story “moonshine, or more exactly, a clever adaptation of a well-known international folktale.”
The Llewelyn and Gelert legend was retold in the New World, where it evolved into “The Trapper and His Dog,” a Northwoods variation of the same plot, much reprinted. As late as 1989 the legend re-emerged in a court of law as what we might call “the Gelert defense.” In The People of the State of Illinois v. Robert Gene Turner, according to the case summary of Turner’s appeal of his murder conviction, the defense lawyer had, in the original trial,
told the jury about [the lawyer’s] great-great-grandparents who lived long ago in rural Iowa. During an especially cold winter, the husband became ill and the wife had to take him 20 miles to the nearest doctor. She left her baby at home, under the protection of their faithful dog. When she returned, the home was a shambles and the dog lay bloody and near death. Because she could not find the baby, she assumed the dog had killed it and in a fit of anger she shot the dog. Only then did she hear the baby cry, and when she found the baby, there lay nearby a dead wolf. Though it appeared to her that the dog killed the baby, it had in fact saved the baby from the wolf.
The prosecutor began his response by commenting, “This is not a place for stories and quite frankly I don’t believe the wolf story….” The defendant’s appeal was denied. (North Eastern Reporter, 2d series, vol. 539, p. 1204, pointed out to me by lawyer K. L. Jones of Oak Park, Illinois.)
The Gelert story and its direct spinoffs are traditional “rural” legends. What we get of the story in urban legend form, after further transformations along the way, is “The Choking Doberman,” which emerged in the early 1980s as another true dog story that was too good to be true. The prince’s palace became an ordinary home, and the wolf was changed to a burglar. The impulsive slaying of the dog was replaced by a trip to the vet, and the dog doc makes an emergency telephone call to the cops. A prime example of how this “new” urban legend is told is the first legend of this chapter, which, by the way, is just as much a “jumping-to-conclusions” story as are those in Chapter 1.
In general, urban legend dogs are more often victims than heroes (likewise the UL cats, gerbils, birds, and even babies). The pooches get cooked, crushed, and sometimes fooled into jumping out of an upper-story window. They get blamed for barging in where they are not invited and scolded for causing messes that they never created. Even a pet dog’s lifeless body gets no respect in the world of urban legends.
Read on for all of these themes, and notice, please, that I saved one of the most disturbing dog tales for the next chapter, where poetic justice is the overall operative theme.
* * *
LOST DOG
Description:
3 legs
Blind in left eye
Missing right ear
Tail broken
Neutered…
Answers to name of “Lucky”
* * *
“The Choking Doberman”
Elizabeth Bunn: Jordan and I were at dinner with friends of ours, Mike and his wife Shar…. His wife is a nurse, and she’s from the Upper Peninsula. OK, so we were out to dinner with them, and they live in Rosedale Park [a Detroit neighborhood]. And I’m not entirely sure how it came up in discussion. But they have dogs; they have two dogs, and she was pregnant at the time, and I think we were talking about dogs and security…and break-ins in Detroit, and they knew that we had dogs….[Discussion of her two dogs and their personalities]
And then Shar says, “Oh, God, you’re not going to believe this story,” that she heard from her sister who still lives in St. Paul, and her sister had told her of an incident that happened to a neighbor of her sister’s, an elderly woman who lived alone, I think was a widow. This woman had a Doberman Pinscher, in part for companionship and part for protection. And the woman came home one day, and the Doberman Pinscher was gagging [laughter]. Which anyone who has dogs knows is actually a common phenomenon. But whatever the dog was gagging on, it was stuck in his throat, and the woman got real concerned. So she took the dog to the vet, thinking the dog was going to choke to death.
So she got to the vet, and the vet said, “No problem, he’s just got something caught in his throat and we’ll get it out, but you might as well go home while we do it, because I don’t know how long it’s going to take.”
So the woman goes home, and as she’s entering her house the phone is ringing. And so she grabs the phone, and it’s the vet. And the vet says, “Don’t ask any questions, the police are on their way, just leave your house immediately.” So the woman has no idea what’s going on, but does as instructed and leaves the house. And the police do shortly arrive, and the police go immediately downstairs in the cellar, I guess where the dog was normally kept…they somehow knew to go right to the cellar where they found a guy [laughter] in shock, I mean frozen in shock with three fingers missing!
By Ivan Brunetti
[Janet Langlois: Oh! {laughs and groans}]
Bunn:…and the moral of the story, or the whatever of the story, was that the vet…that the Doberman Pinscher had eventually gagged up or thrown up three fingers. The vet had pieced together that it was a burglar and called the police and called the woman, and that was it.
Langlois: Amazing! Do you remember what your response was when you first heard it?
Bunn: Well, I totally believed it 100%, as did Jordan, and we were both just sick; it’s so disgusting, and yet so vivid! And I think part of it is…I grew up with dogs, and there’s very few dogs I’m really scared of, but Doberman Pinschers are…I’m just very very frightened of Doberman Pinschers. I’ve heard a lot of Doberman Pinscher stories….
[In retelling the story later] I do know that I chopped off a person in the telling. I did not say “a friend of mine’s sister’s neighbor.”…I said “a friend of mine’s neighbor when she lived in St. Paul.”…
Langlois: Can you locate the time when you first heard it?
Bunn: It would have been about April, May, or June of ’81.
As told by Elizabeth Bunn, a Detroit labor lawyer, interviewed in 1983 by Dr. Janet Langlois, Professor of English at Wayne State University. Extracts from Tape No. R1983(1), Wayne State University Folklore Archive, Detroit, Michigan. I wrote an analysis of this legend for my book, The Choking Doberman, and even worked out a genealogical chart of the legend’s development for The Mexican Pet. The most distinctive modern motif that has entered is the telephone call warning the victim of an intruder hiding in the house. The same plot device occurs in “The Baby-Sitter and the Man Upstairs,” included in Chapter 10. It’s also notable that a veterinarian saves the day, both in “The Choking Doberman” and in “The Mexican Pet” legend of Chapter 1.
“The Swiss Charred Poodle”
What Can You Believe?
Our recent series on Famo
us Fables & Legends of Our Time & Our Town drew such a thunderous lack of response that we have decided to accede to popular request and drop dead with yet another (will the last one to leave please turn off the presses?).
Actually, what inspired me to fly in the face of such unanimous opposition was the surfacing of the Chinese Poodle story on the front page of my very own beloved newspaper; The Chronicle, if memory serves. Like all deathless fables, the Chinese Poodle is on a 10-year cycle, so I guess it was due again. I printed it first in ’39, with a Chinatown setting. I heard it again in ’49, from New York, and in ’59 it “occurred” in Honolulu.
This time, a couple of years overdue [1971], it was circulated by the Reuters news agency from Zurich via Hong Kong, and goes:
“Hans and Erna W., who asked the Zurich newspaper Blick not to publish their full names, said they took Rosa to a restaurant and asked the waiter to give her something to eat. The waiter had trouble understanding the couple but eventually picked up the dog and carried her to the kitchen where they thought she would be fed.
“Eventually the waiter returned carrying a dish. When the couple removed the silver lid they found Rosa.”
Reprinted with special permission of King Features Syndicate
When you first read that, you immediately smelled a rat, or at least a roast poodle, right? The tipoff is that Hans and Erna W. didn’t want their names published, the telltale sign of your true fable. People involved in these fabrications never want their names published.
Among the rat-smellers when the Roast Rosa story broke was S.F.’s Robert Reynolds, U.S. representative for the Hong Kong Tourist Association. “That story had so many holes in it we didn’t even bother to issue a denial,” he says. “First of all, that alleged Swiss couple couldn’t have been tourists because pets are quarantined for six months before they’re allowed into Hong Kong. And in the second place, pets are forbidden in Hong Kong restaurants, just as they are here.”
However, I should add that the Roast a la Rosa fable engendered some lively dialogue that day at Harvey Wallbanger’s pub on Sansome. “Now there’s the original Chinese Doggy Diner,” said Jack Geyer, publicist for the L.A. Rams. “Nope,” disagreed P. K. Macker, “it’s chow mein.” “You’re both wrong,” decided Pat Short, owner of Wallbanger’s. “That’s a Swiss charred poodle.”
From Herb Caen’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle, September 12, 1971. Caen captured perfectly the typical discussion of “The Dog’s Dinner” legend, although, of course, he may have invented all or part of his report. Quoting one’s cronies in a bar is a traditional device used by newspaper columnists. The actual news item Caen quoted was circulated by Reuters, a frequent source of doubtful stories; their report claimed that Rosa had been served “garnished with pepper sauce and bamboo shoots.” In other versions of the story the couple finish their multi-course meal, then ask about the dog and are told, “Dog was dish number eight.” Or they recognize the dog’s collar on the serving dish. Sometimes the horrified couple drop dead on the spot; more often, they sue the restaurant. The legend is told among the deaf community as an illustration of how sign language may be misunderstood by hearing people. When the legend was alluded to in the comic strip “Zippy” in 1990, the weird clown for whom the strip is titled said the incident happened in Bangkok, but he is told that “It’s an old ‘Urban Myth’…It didn’t really happen.” Zippy laments, “One by one, all my childhood illusions are shattered.”
“Not My Dog”
A certain shaggy-dog story that’s been circulating for nearly 75 years hounds me, and I’ll be doggoned if I can figure out whether I’m barking up the wrong tree when I call it a legend.
This is the “Lassie Come Home” of animal legends that keeps reappearing after I’ve decided it has gone forever:
The story begins when someone is invited to visit the home of a person who is usually wealthier or socially superior. The uncomfortable visitor is unsure about etiquette, and matters are made worse when a large, lively, dirty beast of a dog follows the caller into the house.
While the caller tries to respect social amenities, the dog tracks mud in, gobbles the snacks, and paws the furniture. The conversation becomes strained.
As the caller rises to leave, the hostess, with one eye on the wreckage, remarks icily, “Don’t forget to take your dog!”
“My dog?” the caller says. “I thought it was yours!”
People telling this story always supply some corroborating details. For example, a version published in 1991 in a Salt Lake City, Utah, newspaper gave the names of newlyweds, “the youngest couple on the block,” who had purchased a “snug old bungalow” and spent heavily to remodel and decorate the place.
When their next-door neighbor, “an ancient eccentric” and former socialite came to call, she was followed into the house by a big, black Labrador.
When the dog chased the newlyweds’ pet Siamese, the room was trashed, and as the aghast visitor rose to leave, the hostess begged, “Please, don’t leave your dog.”
Punch line: “My dog? My dear young woman, I thought that beast was yours.”
But there are too many other versions of the story circulating to credit this as absolutely 100% true and original.
The earliest version of “Not My Dog” I’ve found was in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1924 children’s book, Emily Climbs. I suspect Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables, was adapting a story she’d heard, perhaps on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where she grew up.
Emily, the young heroine, mistakes “a fairly large, fluffy white dog” for her hostess’s pet chow, Chu-Chin, when she calls on Miss Janet Royal, a “brilliant, successful woman.” The dog, covered with mud, and certainly not a chow, follows her into the elegant parlor and makes a mess.
As she leaves, Emily is asked, “Hadn’t you better take your dog?”
Punch line: “I—I thought he was yours—your chow.”
Time passes…then the story shows up in House of Ill Fame, a 1985 book by Simon Hoggart, a columnist for the Observer (London). Hoggart tells it about a Member of Parliament who, while “doing the rounds of his constituency,” is invited into one home for tea. He is followed in by a large dog which, to everyone’s surprise and embarrassment, “suddenly cocked its leg and peed on the floor.”
You guessed it: The dog does not belong to the hosts.
A couple of years pass…and the story shows up again, this time in Ed Regis’s 1987 book Who Got Einstein’s Office? In this version, said to have occurred at Princeton in 1946, the famous mathematician Julian Bigelow called on his distinguished colleague John von Neumann and was followed into the house by a Great Dane.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the rest of the story.
And again…this time in Uncommon Genius, a 1990 book by Denise G. Shekerjian about winners of the MacArthur “genius awards.” (This story seems to have an attraction for geniuses!) Shekerjian recalls an interview she had with a University of California anthropologist in Berkeley during which a “big old mangy dog…a bearlike creature…a big, smelly animal,” etc., followed her inside.
She concludes, “I asked her if we could let her dog outside for a while, just until we finished.”
“My dog?” she says. “You mean he’s not your dog?”
Could such an incident actually happen? I have no reason to doubt any of these published accounts, but has it also happened to what we might call “ordinary people” who don’t write books or articles about it?
Well, it did, in fact, also happen to a man in Ashland, Ohio, who wrote me in 1990 about one time in 1970 when his family was visiting friends in Florida. A beagle hound followed them into the friends’ home, climbed on a chair, and started eating from a plate.
It was not either family’s dog, of course, and so, wrote the man, “The dog got the bum’s rush.”
I need mention also the lady from Middletown, Rhode Island, who wrote me about the time when she lived in California around 1975. Her mother’s sup
ervisor came to visit, followed into the house by a large dog…and so forth.
I have other accounts, but the best variation on the story I have was sent to me in 1991, marked “for your ‘Not My Dog’ file.” It came from Debbi Brennan of Moss Beach, California, who wrote that she kept goats in the 1960s. One time a new neighbor asked to have her female goat bred with Brennan’s male goat.
The neighbor arrived leading the goat and followed by a little girl who closely watched the mating, asking several questions which were answered “truthfully but tactfully.”
Afterwards Debbi invited the neighbor to have a cup of tea, and asked if her little girl would like a cookie. Punch line: “That’s not my little girl. She just followed me in from the gate.”
By then, the child had wandered off. I wonder if she had a big shaggy dog tagging along.
Expanded from my newspaper column “Urban Legends” for the week of July 1, 1991. When I announced in June 1992 that my syndicated column was to be discontinued, I heard from Jacob and Helen Schneider of Westerville, Ohio, who wrote that it seemed like their last chance to report their experience of a dozen years before. Invited to dinner with other members of their daughter’s high school drill team, they were followed into the hosts’ home by “a huge black dog.” The dog sniffed at all the potluck dishes set out on the table, and the host finally asked, “Jake, how long have you had that dog?” It was not, of course, the Schneiders’, nor the hosts’, and the incident spawned a catch phrase still used between the couples: “Remember that dog!?”
My conclusion: this is truly an experience that repeats itself, and it has generated an oft-retold story. So, in my dogged search for the truth, I’ll call it “almost a legend.”
Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends Page 5