The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs

by The New Yorker Magazine

  I hear mongrel packs have taken the roads upstate,

  attacking deer at will. But we will go to the kennel show

  for blue snapping ribbons. The fairgrounds will shake

  under the truck. He’ll call the dogs: “Go slowly, hounds.

  I said go slow.” We all may have made a grave mistake.

  —ELIZABETH MACKLIN | 1980 |

  REAL DOGS

  RICHARD COHEN

  In the past, the only recourse for a dog who craved fame was Hollywood. A dog was either a movie dog or a house pet, end of discussion. While a few dogs became celebrities, the vast majority passed through life unknown, leaving behind no more than a handful of memories scattered like bones across back yards and living rooms. Then, in 1990, Chuck Svoboda and Frank Simon, two men working the Southwest border for the United States Customs Service, decided that something had to be done to get some less flashy dogs a little more attention. They discussed the problem with their immediate supervisor, and, as a result, the United States Customs Service issued nine baseball-style trading cards, each picturing a drug-detecting dog and listing the dog’s age, breed, seizure record, and most notable achievement. The cards, which are distributed to schoolchildren, show canine agents sniffing tires, standing in pickups, and straining in the glare of the midday Texas sun. Real dogs solving real problems.

  We learned all this from Morris Berkowitz, who is a canine-program manager with the Customs Service and is determined to improve the image of the working dog. “These dogs may not play ball,” he likes to say, “but they can do a little trick called ‘stop crime.’ ”

  Last April, Milk-Bone Dog Biscuits, part of a division of Nabisco Foods, took the dog-card concept a step further: it named two dozen canine agents to an honorary All-Star team, issued a second set of cards, celebrating these dogs, and began putting them inside boxes of Milk-Bones. A dog handler named August King, who is partnered with a sixty-pound yellow Labrador retriever, claims that the cards could actually work as deterrents to drug trafficking. “When dealers get a look at the dogs stacked against them, they just might change their plans,” he told us. Nabisco executives speak in more general terms. “The cards put us on the side of the good dog and good dogs everywhere,” a company spokesman said.

  All told, three hundred and forty-seven dogs are employed by the Customs Service, and police America’s airports, seaports, and border checkpoints. It was twenty-four of those dogs that were chosen as All-Stars. Two New York dogs made the squad. “Rufus and Jack—both are legends, but Rufus is an animal I truly respect,” Mr. Berkowitz said. Last year, while searching a cargo truck, Rufus, a sad-eyed springer spaniel, uncovered nine hundred pounds of cocaine, and in the course of his career he has found over eighty million dollars’ worth of narcotics. “To understand how remarkable that stat is, you should know that Rufus is at least thirteen years old and that most dogs retire at around nine,” Mr. Berkowitz explained. “It’s not that they lose their desire; their bodies just won’t do what they once did. The retired dogs spend their days like civilian dogs—lying in front of a TV or running around some yard. But Rufus is unstoppable. He’s like Nolan Ryan.”

  In their pictures, the dogs look stern and businesslike—all but Corky. Corky, a member of the All-Stars, is a beige cocker spaniel with floppy ears and thick fur, who looks more like a lapdog than like a customs agent. We asked Mr. Berkowitz why a non-active agent (Corky’s card reads “Retired”) was named to the All-Star team—wasn’t that sort of like sending Bill Bradley to the Olympics? “Corky is not an average agent,” Mr. Berkowitz replied. “Corky broke a line many people thought unbreakable. He was the first cute dog to work in Customs. Before Corky, all drug-detection canines were big breeds. Labs or shepherds. But some travellers get spooked by big dogs, so we brought Corky on to sniff. He’s passive. If he picks up a scent, he doesn’t scratch or claw, he simply sits at the suspect’s feet. Before Corky, our people thought drug dogs had to look a certain way. Big and tough. We don’t think that anymore.”

  In the light of Corky’s historical role, many drug-dog fans consider his card the set’s most valuable. “All the cards are going to be worth something,” Ann Smith, a public-relations manager for Nabisco, told us. “But if you’re going to hang on to just one, hang on to Corky.” She added that Corky has appeared on the TV show Top Cops, reenacting some of his most dramatic cases, among them the discovery of 56.4 pounds of cocaine in an overnight-courier bag at Miami International Airport. “When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards,” she said. “My favorite card was Johnny Bench crouched behind home plate. If you want to get my Corky, in addition to Bench you have to give me a Ted Williams and a Babe Ruth.”

  | 1992 |

  LA FORZA DEL ALPO

  Roger Angell

  (An opera in four acts, conceived prior to successive evenings at the Westminster Kennel Club Show and the Metropolitan Opera)

  CAST

  GUGLIELMO—A dashing fox terrier (tenor)

  MIMI (Ch. Anthracite Sweet-Stuff of Armonk)—A poodle (soprano)

  DON CANINO (her father)—Another poodle (baritone)

  BRUTTO—Companion poodle to Don Canino and suitor for the hand of Mimi (basso)

  FIDOLETTA—A Lhasa Apso. Nurse to Mimi but secretly enamored of Guglielmo. A real bitch (mezzo)

  SPIQUE—A comical bulldog (basso bundo)

  DR. FAUSTUS—A veterinary (tenor)

  CHORUS: Non-sporting, herding, and terrier contestants; judges, handlers, reporters

  (There will be three walks around the block)

  After the disastrous failure of his misbegotten early Arfeo at La Scala in the winter of 1843, few expected that Verdi would soon return to the themes of canine anti-clericalism and the proliferation of Labradors (labbrazazione), but his discovery of the traditional Sicilian grooming cavatina—as recapitulated in the touching barkarole “Dov’é il mio guinzaglio?” (“I have lost my leash”) that closes Act III—appears to have sent him back to work. Verdi’s implacable opposition to the Venetian muzzling ordinance of 1850 is to be heard in the rousing “Again a full moon” chorus that resonates so insistently during Brutto’s musings before and after the cabaletta:

  At the opening curtain, Guglielmo and Mimi, in adjoining benching stalls, plan their elopement despite the opposition of Don Canino, who has arranged her forthcoming marriage to Brutto despite rumors about the larger male’s parentage. After the lovers’ tender duet “A cuccia, a cuccia, amore mio” (“Sit! Sit, my love!”), recalling their first meeting at an obedience class, they part reluctantly, with Guglielmo distressed at her anxiety over the nuptials: “Che gelida manina” (“Your icy paw”). Don Canino, enlisting the support of the perfidious Fidoletta, plots to dispatch Guglielmo into the K-9 Corps, and, joined by Brutto, the trio, in “Sotto il nostro albero” (“Under the family tree”), jovially celebrates the value of pedigree.

  As the judging begins, Guglielmo, alerted to Don Canino’s plot by the faithful Spique, disguises himself as a miniature apricot poodle, but the lovers fail to detect the lurking presence of Don Canino, who has hidden himself among a large entry of Rottweilers in Ring 6. A pitched battle between hostile bands of Lakeland and Bedlington terriers requires the attention of Spique, and in his absence Fidoletta entraps the innocent Guglielmo, who discloses his identity to her. She breaks off their amusing impromptu duet “Non so chi sei” (“I don’t know who you are, but I sure like your gait”) to fetch the police, but Guglielmo makes good his escape through the loges during the taping of a Kal Kan commercial—an octet severely criticized in its day, but to which Mascagni makes clear obeisance in his later sestina, “Mangia, Pucci.”

  Guglielmo, not realizing in the darkness that he has found his way back to his natal kennel in Chappaqua, delivers the dirgelike “Osso Bucco” while digging in the yard, but is elated by news from Spique that he has uncovered certain documents in the back-door garbage compactor. Fidoletta, puzzled, trails the valiant pair as they hasten back to the Garden.
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  In our turbulent final act, the wedding of Mimi and Brutto is interrupted by the arrival of Dr. Faustus, bearing the purloined A.K.C. documents unearthed by Spique. The good vet declares that the nuptials must halt, because Brutto is in fact not only Mimi’s father but (through a separate whelping) her uncle as well. Don Canino, horrified at his own depravity, vows to enter holy orders, and, in a confession, reveals that Brutto is no purebred—“Mira l’occhio azzurro” (“Ol’ Blue Eyes”)—thanks to a Pomeranian on his dam’s side. Dr. Faustus removes Brutto to his laboratory for neutering. Guglielmo, still in disguise, unexpectedly wins a Best of Opposite Sex award in his breed as the lovers are at last united. Guglielmo serenades his Mimi with the “Sono maschio” (“I am a young intact male”) as the happy couple, renouncing show biz, envision their future as a breeding pair with a cut-rate puppy mill in the Garden State Mall. Spique, exhausted by so much unlikelihood, falls asleep on the emptied stage, where his sonorous snores (“Zzzzz”) are joined by those of the audience.

  | 1994 |

  MONOLOGUE OF A DOG ENSNARED IN HISTORY

  There are dogs and dogs. I was among the chosen.

  I had good papers and wolf’s blood in my veins.

  I lived upon the heights inhaling the odors of views:

  meadows in sunlight, spruces after rain,

  and clumps of earth beneath the snow.

  I had a decent home and people on call

  I was fed, washed, groomed,

  and taken for lovely strolls.

  Respectfully, though, and comme il faut.

  They all knew full well whose dog I was.

  Any lousy mutt can have a master.

  Take care, though—beware comparisons.

  My master was a breed apart.

  He had a splendid herd that trailed his every step

  and fixed their eyes on him in fearful awe.

  For me they always had smiles,

  with envy poorly hidden.

  Since only I had the right to greet him with nimble leaps,

  only I could say goodbye by worrying his trousers with my teeth.

  Only I was permitted

  to receive scratching and stroking

  with my head laid in his lap.

  Only I could feign sleep

  while he bent over me to whisper something.

  He raged at others often, loudly.

  He snarled, barked,

  raced from wall to wall.

  I suspect he liked only me

  and nobody else, ever.

  I also had responsibilities: waiting, trusting.

  Since he would turn up briefly and then vanish.

  What kept him down there in the lowlands, I don’t know.

  I guessed, though, it must be pressing business,

  at least as pressing

  as my battle with the cats

  and everything that moves for no good reason.

  There’s fate and fate. Mine changed abruptly:

  One spring came

  and he wasn’t there.

  All hell broke loose at home.

  Suitcases, chests, trunks crammed into cars.

  The wheels squealed tearing downhill

  and fell silent round the bend.

  On the terrace scraps and tatters flamed,

  yellow shirts, armbands with black emblems,

  and lots and lots of battered cartons

  with banners tumbling out.

  I was adrift in this whirlwind,

  more amazed than peeved.

  I felt unfriendly glances on my fur.

  As if I were a dog without a master,

  some pushy stray

  chased downstairs with a broom.

  Someone tore my silver-trimmed collar off,

  someone kicked my bowl, empty for days.

  Then someone else, driving away,

  leaned out from the car

  and shot me twice.

  He couldn’t even shoot straight,

  since I died for a long time, in pain,

  to the buzz of impertinent flies.

  I, the dog of my master.

  —WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA | 2004 |

  (Translated, from the Polish, by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.)

  SCRATCH AND SNIFF

  IAN FRAZIER

  Cell phones smell. You wouldn’t think so, but they do. The K-9 Unit of the New Jersey Department of Corrections, while training seven recently acquired cell-phone-sniffing dogs, first put a whole bunch of cell-phone parts in a plastic box to create a kind of sachet of cell-phone scent for use in imprinting. The basic, pervasive cell-phone smell that built up in the closed box was powerful—a sweetish, metallic, ozoney, weird robotic reek. People would never carry such a rank object as a cell phone in their pockets if their noses were as good as a dog’s.

  To Troy, Ernie, Chance, and the other muscular, well-fed, and extremely enthusiastic dogs who search for illegal cell phones inside New Jersey’s thirteen state prisons, the smell of a cell phone is bliss. They love to follow it, love finding its source even more. While held in restraint, just before the search, they emit low, well-disciplined whines of almost unbearable expectation. And when they do find the cell phone—or the cell-phone charger, the earpiece, the battery, or any other related object that somehow picked up cell-phone scent (recently a cell-phone-sniffing dog, though not trained to search for narcotics, found some narcotics that had evidently been stored next to a cell phone)—the dogs react with a panting, whining, scratching happiness greater than any human happiness by a factor similar to that by which a dog’s sense of smell is said to be better than ours.

  Inside a prison, cell phones defeat some of the purpose of incarceration. They’re among the biggest problems prison officials face. Criminals with cell phones continue to run their gangs even while locked up. How do they get the phones? “Oh, gee—all kinds of ways,” Thomas Moran, the New Jersey D.O.C. chief of staff, said the other day. “Their friends shoot ’em over the fence with potato guns, fly ’em in on model airplanes, arrows … Body cavities, of course, when a girlfriend visits. Packages. Food deliveries. F.C.C. regulations say we can’t interfere with cell-phone transmissions by jamming. Going after the illegal phones with dogs is by far the most efficient means.”

  Recently, the officers of the K-9 Unit held a demonstration with their cell-phone dogs on the grounds of the Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility, in central Jersey farm country. The officers are so proud of their dogs they beam. As the dogs found cell phones hidden in lockers and near bunks in an unused dorm building, and sniffed out a dog-tooth-marked cell phone in the weeds of a field, the officers explained the program.

  Captain Matthew Kyle: “We don’t want to publicate what the cell-phone smell is exactly. It’s an organic substance that’s in all cell phones—leave it at that. The dogs can smell it even when it’s masked. They can find it if the cell phone’s in water, oil, peanut butter—anywhere.”

  Sergeant William Crampton: “Only time we ever had a dog indicate inaccurately was on a diabetic test kit one individual had.”

  Officer Donald Mitchell: “We worked with thirteen dogs to get the seven we have now. Some dogs we had to fail out for environmental reasons. The dog can’t work in the prison environment. Maybe a dog don’t like the slippery floors in the cellblock, or the noise, or the food odors. Some dogs don’t like heights. On the top tier of cells you’re looking down through a floor grating four or five stories. There’s dogs won’t walk on that. Or they don’t like the heat up there in the summer.”

  Officer Joseph Nicholas: “All our dogs right now are German shepherds or Labs. We did try one golden retriever, but we had to fail him out. That dog was too easygoing. He’d come in a room on a search and just lay down. We sent him back to the Seeing Eye dog center in Morristown, where all our cell-phone dogs came from. That golden was a lover, not a fighter.”

  Captain Kyle: “Very few other states have cell-phone-dog programs like ours—Maryland and Virginia are
two of them. There’s a private contractor in California that trains dogs for cell-phone work, but they charge twenty-one thousand dollars for three dogs. We trained all our dogs ourselves, saving the taxpayers money. Since we started with our first three dogs, in October of 2008, we’ve found a hundred and thirty-three cell phones, a hundred and twenty-eight chargers, and I am not sure how many earpieces, batteries, and other items. We believe that eventually every prison system in the country will be using cell-phone dogs.”

  | 2009 |

  DOGOLOGY

  Fiction

  T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE

  RUMORS

  It was the season of mud, drainpipes drooling, the gutters clogged with debris, a battered and penitential robin fixed like a statue on every lawn. Julian was up early, a Saturday morning, beating eggs with a whisk and gazing idly out the kitchen window and into the colorless hide of the day, expecting nothing, when all at once the scrim of rain parted to reveal a dark, crouching presence in the far corner of the yard. At first glance, he took it to be a dog—a town ordinance that he particularly detested disallowed fences higher than three feet, and so the contiguous lawns and flower beds of the neighborhood had become a sort of open savanna for roaming packs of dogs—but before the wind shifted and the needling rain closed in again he saw that he was wrong. This figure, partially obscured by the resurgent forsythia bush, seemed out of proportion, all limbs, as if a dog had been mated with a monkey. What was it, then? Raccoons had been at the trash lately, and he’d seen an opossum wavering down the street like a pale ghost one night after a dreary, overwrought movie Cara had insisted upon, but this was no opossum. Or raccoon, either. It was dark in color, whatever it was—a bear, maybe, a yearling strayed down from the high ridges along the river, and hadn’t Ben Ober told him somebody on F Street had found a bear in their swimming pool? He put down the whisk and went to fetch his glasses.