An A–Z of Exceptional Dogs - Mikita Brottman

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of man and dog.

      I’m drawn to Caesar in part because he’s a Boston terrier, and bully breeds remind me of Grisby, but also because he’s such a fully realized character in the story—all the more reason why it seems wrongheaded to see him as a mere symbol. Like Don Hedger and Eden Bower, Caesar III has his own scent, texture, and personality. In what to me are the story’s most moving scenes, the narrative voice slides almost imperceptibly from Don’s perspective to Caesar’s, and though we may not consciously notice it, we’re experiencing events from Caesar’s point of view. When Don carries his dog up the ladder to the roof, for example, we learn, of Caesar, that “never did he feel so much his master’s greatness and his own dependence upon him, as when he crept under his arm for this perilous ascent.” The roof to Caesar is “a kind of Heaven, which no-one was strong enough to reach but his great, paint-smelling master,” where he and Don lie together under the stars, feeling the same delight, “lost in watching the glittering game.”

      I couldn’t help thinking of Caesar when I came across a bull terrier in Edith Wharton’s novel The House of Mirth. In an early scene, Mrs. Bertha Dorset gets on board a train “accompanied by a maid, a bull-terrier, and a footman staggering under a load of bags and dressing-cases.” This dog at once caught my attention, yet oddly enough, we never see or hear of the creature again. Bertha Dorset is a major character in The House of Mirth, and Edith Wharton has a fine eye for detail, so it’s surprising to come across this elusive bull terrier. Perhaps Mrs. Dorset borrowed the dog, regarding it as a fashionable accessory for a trip to Bellomont, the country home of her friends Judy and Gus Trenor. She does have a calculating, opportunistic nature, and she might very well forget, lose, or give away a dog that had lost its charm. And we’re never informed that the bull terrier belongs to Bertha Dorset—it could be a gift for one of the Trenors’ two teenage daughters, or for another member of the house party. It might even belong to her maid.

      However unlikely it seems that a maid would be permitted to travel with her bull terrier, it makes more sense than the notion that Wharton would have introduced a dog into her novel simply to forget about it in the next chapter. From her childhood, dogs were her most loyal and lasting companions, though she preferred smaller breeds than bull terriers. In a well-known photograph, she has a Pekingese on each shoulder, the two creatures nestling comfortably atop the leg-of-mutton sleeves of their mistress’s dress. In other images, the author sits with dogs on her lap, under her arms, or at her feet. In one or two pictures, she sits at a desk, pen in hand, but these images were posed; Wharton actually wrote in bed, with her coffee, the morning papers, and her dogs all spread out around her. Like many women, she was not ashamed to admit she slept with her dogs. According to an article in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, 25 percent of female dog owners confessed to doing the same (as opposed to 16 percent of men; evidently, men are either more fastidious, less affectionate, or simply lying).

      Wharton’s first dog was a puppy named Foxy, bought for her by her father when she was a young girl. “How I loved that first ‘Foxy’ of mine, how I cherished and yearned over and understood him!” wrote Wharton as an adult, looking back on her childhood. “And how quickly he relegated all dolls and other inanimate toys to the region of my everlasting indifference!” The author of The Age of Innocence felt she shared a special understanding with animals, writing that she was one of the few who “love and understand the little four-foots … [and] have the mysterious animal affinity [to] communicate with [them].” Her relationship with Foxy, she wrote, “made me into a conscious sentient person, fiercely possessive, anxiously watchful, and woke in me that long ache of pity for animals, and for all inarticulate beings, which nothing has ever stilled.”

      The House of Mirth was written in 1905, when it was presumably acceptable for a lady to bring a small dog with her—or with her maid, at least—on the train. These days, Amtrak has a strict no-pet policy (with an exception for service dogs), though the inner-city rail networks in Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle all allow well-behaved dogs to ride with their owners. Outside the United States, railways are more accommodating. Dogs are allowed on trains in much of Europe. We took Grisby with us to London a couple of years ago, and he sat beside me on buses and trains, even in taxis. He remained composed and unflustered even in a subway car packed with patriotic revelers on their way to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee (Grisby may not be a British bulldog, but he knows how to keep a stiff upper lip).

      Of course, the best way to get to know a city is by walking, and this is true of dogs as much as humans. I get a lot more exercise since Grisby’s arrival in my life; these days, I prefer to travel by foot just for the pleasure of watching him trot along by my side. I like the way he draws my attention to things I’d never noticed before: stains on the sidewalk, discarded food, chewing gum, feathers, cigarette butts. For Grisby, every season has its special delights. In winter, he’ll climb through the snow, catching flakes in his mouth. In spring, he’ll stick his snout into damp gutters and rain-soaked trash piles. In summer, he, like Caesar, loves to bark at the waves on the beach, and in fall, he cocks his leg against piles of dried leaves; then, when he’s covered them with his smell, he’ll kick them all over the street, just to show everyone who’s boss. The only weather he really dislikes is rain. In wet conditions, his walk will turn into a run as he charges around the block at top speed, running up every stoop, trying to dodge inside every doorway, as if hoping some sympathetic stranger will take pity on him and invite him to dry off by the fire.

      He enjoys getting dirty, but unlike Caesar III, he doesn’t enjoy his baths, and for this reason I try to keep them limited to once a month. It’s hard to resist, though, because it’s such a treat to have him in the tub with me, to hold his warm, wet body firmly between my knees. He soon stops struggling, allowing me to wash his ears gently, remove the dirt from his wrinkles, shampoo his neck, back, and belly. After rinsing him off, I’ll lift him out of the tub and watch him run around the room, shaking his body dry, looking oddly naked without his collar.

      Grisby loves to walk, but he likes other modes of transport as well; he enjoys riding in the small red cart used by the concierge in our building to deliver large packages. If he loves to be pushed, he loves even more to be driven. Like Mr. Toad, he has a head for motoring adventures, and he’ll start racing in excitement whenever he realizes we’re heading for the garage. Like all dogs, he loves sticking his nose out of the window and catching a breeze, letting his ears blow back in the wind. He’s even worked out how to press the electric window button with his paw (though “worked out” may not be exactly the right way of putting it), which, on a cold morning, can lead to some frustrating battles between us (of course, he can undo the window lock, too).

      Best of all are our rides back from the beach together on summer days, when Grisby—warm and wet, with sand in his fur—is strapped into his harness on my lap. On these drives, we’re connected at a physical level, like Don and Caesar climbing up to the roof. Strapped to my body, Grisby presses heavily into my stomach, and our bodies respond together to the jolts of the car. At those moments, with a wet bulldog snoring on my lap, it’s as though we’re merged together organically, a hybrid creature of flesh and fur, a single animal with two beating hearts.

       [4]

       DOUCHKA

      DOUCHKA, A TROUBLESOME and neurotic German shepherd, was the subject of Behind the Bathtub, a book that won the Prix Médicis (a major French literary award) in 1962. The author of this sober and touching memoir was Colette Audry, a French literary critic, screenwriter, and expert on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she often collaborated. She was a militant feminist, deeply involved in the anti-Stalinist left.

      When she first acquires Douchka, Madame Audry is divorced and living in Paris with her teenage son. The dog’s parents, she discovers too late, were brother and sister, and as a result Douchka has various psychological problems, the most serious of which, from Audry’s perspective, is her furious barking

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