An A–Z of Exceptional Dogs - Mikita Brottman

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In An A–Z of Exceptional Dogs, I draw attention to dogs that inhabit the margins or lurk on the periphery, dogs that have been overlooked. As is so often the case, those who are allowed behind the scenes or on the sidelines (children, servants, janitors, busboys) often get to see and experience things that are normally kept from public view. Partly because they can’t speak but mainly because they don’t judge, dogs have unfettered access to the backstage of life. Imagine what Prince Albert’s dog Eos could have told us about Queen Victoria, or what Freud’s dog Yofi might have learned from his master’s patients. A dog in the room is a silent observer, a witness to the human drama: it sees all, smells all, and says nothing.

      All the dogs described in this book are, like Grisby, exceptional. This obviously raises the question of what makes an exceptional dog. The answer is simple. What makes a dog exceptional is its owner. In other words, any dog can be exceptional if it’s loved enough. We see our dogs through human eyes; this is the transformative power of projection. In order to understand this process more fully, I don my psychoanalytic hat and, taking a cue from Freud (another late-life dog lover), I put the human-canine relationship on the couch (never mind the dog hair). The way we think about our dogs is infinitely revealing. Rich insights can be gained from observing how people name their dogs, create personalities for them, address them, speak on their behalf, even from the way they pick up after them. For some, a dog is an alter ego; for others, a substitute for a child; other people use their dogs to keep the world at bay, to heal wounds inflicted in infancy, or to recapture their playful, preverbal selves.

      An A–Z of Exceptional Dogs is structured like a leisurely stroll in the park. We begin with Atma, the name given by the misanthropic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer to his succession of standard poodles, and continue alphabetically until we arrive at Zémire, the adored pet of the French poet and intellectual Madame Antoinette Deshoulières. However, the path is not always direct. In this book, as on all our walks, Grisby sometimes leads us on sidetracks, following scents, sniffing out clues and connections, retracing our steps, taking us into the realms of folklore, semiotics, philosophy, and zoology. Sometimes he seems to be leading us astray, but as long as we’re together, we’ll never be lost. Everywhere, every day, he shows me how dog is the mirror of man.

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       ATMA

      THE FAMOUSLY MISANTHROPIC German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer spent twenty-seven years of his life living alone, averse to human company, but like other notorious malcontents, he was deeply attached to his dogs. Throughout his life, from his student days at Göttingen until his death at Frankfurt am Main, Schopenhauer owned a succession of standard poodles—a famously loyal, active, and intelligent breed. “To anyone who needs lively entertainment for the purpose of banishing the dreariness of solitude,” he wrote in 1851, “I recommend a dog, in whose moral and intellectual qualities he will almost always experience delight and satisfaction.”

      Though he remained loyal to the standard poodle, the philosopher’s companions varied in color. The dog he owned in the 1840s was white, and the one he owned at his death—and for which he provided generously in his will—was brown. According to the few guests who visited his home, Schopenhauer was deeply attentive to these animals; though his daily routine was rigid, he always made sure his poodles got regular constitutionals. He even concerned himself with their daily amusements. One colleague recalled being in the middle of an earnest conversation with the philosopher at his home when they were interrupted by the music of a regimental band passing the window, at which point Schopenhauer got up and moved his poodle’s seat closer, to give him a better view of the procession.

      The philosopher was ahead of his time in his concern for animal suffering. “When I see how man misuses the dog, his best friend; how he ties up this intelligent animal with a chain,” he wrote, “I feel the deepest sympathy with the brute and burning indignation against its master.” Yet curiously, while he respected his dogs as individuals, Schopenhauer gave every one of them the same name: Atma (though his last dog—the brown one—generally went by the nickname “Butz”). Atma is the Hindu word for the universal soul (or, as Schopenhauer interpreted it, the impersonal, primordial, eternally renewed force of nature). Historians of philosophy have suggested this naming habit may be connected to Schopenhauer’s theory of individuality, and his notion that a particular type of animal expresses the Platonic ideal of its kind.

      It may, on the other hand, have been something more familiar: an attempt to forestall the pain of loss. This is why the authors Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas gave their new dog—also, coincidentally, a standard poodle—the same name as the dog they’d just lost: Basket. The first Basket was an elegant creature acquired by Toklas at a Parisian dog show, and so named because she immediately pictured him carrying a basket of flowers in his mouth (a skill he never fully mastered). The poodle was treated like a young prince, bathed daily in sulfur water for the benefit of his sensitive skin. Stein let him sit in her lap when she wrote (“on Mount Gertrude,” said Alice), and she claimed the rhythm of the dog’s breathing taught her the essential difference between sentences and paragraphs. When Basket died in 1937, the bereaved women, on the advice of a friend, acquired a similar-looking dog, and gave him the same name.

      When the second Basket arrived in 1938, the couple were living in France. Despite widespread rationing, Basket II didn’t go hungry. The Nazis’ theory of racial purity extended even to pets; as long as a dog had a documented pedigree, it received a food allowance. Basket II lived fourteen years, six past the death of Stein herself, and when he died, Alice B. Toklas was left alone. “His going has stunned me,” she wrote to her friend Carl Van Vechten. “For some time I have realized how much I depended upon him and so it is the beginning of living for the rest of my days without anyone who is dependent on me for anything.” She was too old, she reasoned, to acquire a Basket III.

      It’s natural that a bereaved pet owner should want to stave off the pain of loss by acquiring a second dog that resembles the original, and while I can understand the impulse to name a new dog after a beloved old one, the scheme has a major flaw. In my experience, whatever their breed, dogs are unique and as individual as humans, and you can’t make a gentle dog tough just by calling him Butch. Ideally, we should wait until we’ve gotten a sense of a dog’s personality before picking out a name, but puppy owners, like would-be parents, usually have a name in mind long before they lay eyes on their new arrival.

      Grisby is the first and only dog I’ve ever owned, and I had his name picked out before he was even born. One evening, my partner, David, and I watched a French movie from 1954 called Touchez Pas au Grisbi (translation: Don’t Touch the Loot). The film is about a band of world-weary French gangsters who sit around in a bar planning a heist and mumbling about le grisbi (old-fashioned French criminal slang whose equivalent is something like “loot” or “booty”). As I recall, we both thought the word would be an appropriate name for the dog we were planning to acquire, not only because it is French (though we’ve Anglicized the spelling) but also because it’s a tough, macho way of saying “treasure,” perfect for a little French bulldog.

      The first time I ever laid eyes on one of these creatures, I was walking through Greenwich Village, which of all areas in the United States contains perhaps the greatest concentration of the breed. I was immediately intrigued and enchanted by this odd little animal, with its flat snout and prominent ears. I wanted one so badly it hurt, though it would be another six years before I could fit a dog into my life. Then, when the time was right, I logged on to PuppyFind.com, and there was “Oliver”—a tiny dog with enormous ears and an endearingly inquisitive expression. He was, I thought, the sweetest-looking puppy I’d ever seen, and he’d be weaned by the middle of August, which was exactly when we’d be ready for him. I e-mailed David the photo, though it was a symbolic gesture only—I already knew he was the one. By the end of the day, our deposit to the breeders had been paid, and “Oliver”—all ears—was all ours.

      As of the time

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