An A–Z of Exceptional Dogs

Most of the time, Bill Sikes treats his girlfriend, Nancy, the way he treats his dog. In the end, he murders her in a fit of rage, with Bull’s-eye as a mute witness to the crime (Bill fears the dog’s bloody paw prints will “carry out new evidences of the crime into the streets”). The creature becomes a dark reminder of his master’s guilt, and unable to shake the dog off his trail, Sikes attempts to drown him. Fortunately, the mutt has the sense to slink reproachfully away, eventually—and accidentally—leading the police to his master’s lair. While on the run from an angry mob Sikes hangs himself; it’s not clear whether his death is accidental or intentional. At the sight of his master hanging from a chimney top, in another ambiguous act of anger or possibly remorse, Bull’s-eye hurls himself at the dead man’s shoulders, and he, too, comes to a sorry end. Missing his aim, he lands in a ditch and, “striking his head against a stone, dashe[s] out his brains.” This is how loyalty is repaid.

Bull’s-eye may be the most long-suffering dog in Dickens, but he’s not the only one with a brutal master. In Little Dorrit, the indolent Henry Gowan goes nowhere without Lion, his enormous Newfoundland. Lion is gentle and affectionate. When he encountered Gowan’s fiancée, Pet Meagles, after a short absence, he “put his great paws on her arm and laid his head against her dear bosom.” After Pet and Gowan are married, however, Pet learns her new husband is not only lazy but also horribly cruel. When Lion caused undue alarm, his master “seized the dog with both hands by the collar,” then “felled him with a blow on the head, and standing over him, struck him many times severely with the heel of his boot, so that his mouth was presently bloody.” Poor Lion is “deeply ashamed of having caused them this alarm,” and in order to escape Gowan’s assault, he crawls along the ground “to the feet of his mistress,” but Gowan is unforgiving, kicking him over and over again until he’s dead.

Like his master, Bull’s-eye lives a harsh life, but that doesn’t mean he’s not happy. Contentment, for people as well as dogs, seems to depend largely on familiar relationships and their accustomed dynamics, however difficult they may be for outsiders to understand. We like what we know. Some dogs—at least in literature—do seem to be both deprived and content, such as the mangy dog belonging to Meursault’s elderly neighbor, Salamano, in Camus’s The Stranger. For eight years, this old man beats and insults his dog; then, every night before going to bed, rubs him tenderly with ointment for his skin disease. “He was bad-tempered,” Salamano tells Meursault when his dog goes missing. “We’d have a run-in every now and then. But he was a good dog just the same.”

In the case of Bill Sikes and Bull’s-eye, the dog stands as a kind of avatar for the man—a common literary conceit. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the first sign of Mr. Rochester’s presence is the sight of his faithful companion Pilot, a “great black and white long-haired dog” that Jane, encountering on a dark night, first mistakes for a Gytrash, “a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head.” At the end of the novel, Jane returns to find that Mr. Rochester has lost his sight in the fire that destroyed his home and can’t tell who she is—but Pilot pricks up his ears when she enters the room; “then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and bounded toward me.”

At other times, the master’s dog has a more subtle function. In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Flossie, Oliver Mellors’s spaniel, always heralds her master’s approach. Before long, Lady Chatterley’s heart starts to flutter whenever she sees or hears the dog. Flossie is an indicator of Mellors’s presence, and stands guard during the lovers’ trysts. She’s a working sheepdog, a worthy companion, and such dogs, unlike the lady’s lapdog, are rarely dismissed as pets or playthings. According to the French author Colette Audry, “workmen are always ready to make rude jokes about poodles and basset hounds and their doting woman owners, but wolfhounds, Alsatians, and similar breeds they take very seriously indeed.”

English bulldogs are one of the breeds men take seriously, owing, presumably, to the breed’s apparent toughness and stamina. In 2012, according to a survey conducted by a British men’s grooming brand, the English bulldog was voted “the manliest dog on the planet.” It’s hardly surprising, then, that all kinds of macho objects and activities should be named after the sturdy-looking creature. There are Bulldog jeans and Bulldog knives; there’s Bulldog Gin, Bulldog Hot Sauce, and Bulldog Hardware. There are hundreds of sports teams named the Bulldogs. Vehicles named after the breed include a British fighter aircraft, a Royal Navy ship, an armored personnel carrier, and a German tractor. Could any dog be more butch?

Ironically, the English bulldog is a rather delicate beast, docile and affectionate, prone to health problems and easily tired. His small French cousin, on the other hand, although culturally coded as feminine (see ISSA), is muscular, dominant, and tough as a little tank, not to mention stubborn. Grisby was not the most obstinate dog in his obedience class—that dubious honor went to a terminally intractable terrier whom everyone, including his genteel owner, referred to as “the Nazi”—but he certainly placed a close second. Sometimes he did what was asked of him, but his “training” took only until we got home, whereupon he’d jump out of the car, barge rudely ahead, push through the front door, and run into the house. As our obedience instructor kept reminding us, going to class is the easy part; the hard part is reinforcing the lessons at home. She was, I thought, infinitely patient and, I was pleased to find, had no beef with affection and rewards. At first, I was worried she might endorse the techniques promoted by Cesar Millan, who insists that we assert dominance over our dogs instead of treating them like babies.

Personally, I don’t believe you need to act like an alpha dog at home, nor do I think badly trained dogs will always try to assert themselves over strangers. Still, I do understand the importance of consistency, and I realize Grisby is sometimes disobedient because, unable to bring myself to punish him, I’ve been unpredictable in my demands and rewards. In this respect, David has been—and continues to be—the better master. He’s firm, consistent, and not afraid to lay down the law. When—as sometimes happens—Grisby slips out of our apartment and runs into the hall, one strong word from David can make him skid to a halt, lower his ears, and submit to the leash. If I’m the one reprimanding him, however, he keeps still until I approach, then jumps up like a jack-in-the-box and runs off, throwing me a backward glance that says, “So long, sucker!”

In this way, perhaps, David’s relationship with Grisby is healthier than mine. With me, Grisby is enmeshed; with David, he knows his place. In other words, David has what most people would probably consider to be an appropriate kind of relationship with his dog. He loves Grisby, worries when he’s sick, enjoys having him around, but doesn’t miss him—doesn’t even think about him, doesn’t even really notice—when he’s not there. He has his own pet names for Grisby—Bright Eyes, Big Boy, Señor—that are affectionate but not infantilizing. It seems ridiculous for me to be jealous, but sometimes I wonder whether, as males, David and Grisby have a bond I’ll never share. It’s tempting to romanticize the man-dog connection, and to overlook the fact that it can be instrumental or exploitative, or that it usually involves questions of aggression and control.

These issues appear most overtly in the hypermale world of dogfighting, a practice that goes back to ancient times. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Babylonians all employed fighting dogs on the battlefield. During the Roman invasion of Britain, the conquering legions were impressed by what early historians referred to as the pugnaces britanniae: the fighting dogs of Britain. The specific breed of these ferocious, battle-ready beasts is unknown, but in light of an early reference to them as “broad-mouthed,” it’s widely believed they were remote ancestors of the modern-day mastiff.

Soon after their invasion, the Romans began to import British fighting dogs, even appointing an officer whose job was to select especially pugnacious animals to send abroad. Some were trained to fight in battle; others were turned into gladiators and pitted against bulls, bears, and wild elephants in the Colosseum, a precursor to modern bullfighting. Later, the pugnaces britanniae were used in bearbaiting, a “sport” that flourished in the sixteenth century and was especially popular among English noblemen (ironically, it’s the blue bloods who pursue blood sports most earnestly). By the early nineteenth century, the pastime had become less common, owing to the increasing scarcity and rising cost of bears (as well as growing concerns about cruelty to animals), and in 1835 bear- and bullbaiting were both outlawed by an Act of Parliament. Henceforth, these “sports” were replaced by the cheaper, legal alternative of dog-on-dog combat, and fighting breeds were crossbred to create agile and vicious creatures capable of brawling for hours at a time.

Shortly before the American Civil War, English fighting dogs were imported to the United States, where they were mated with native breeds. Dogfighting quickly became a popular spectator and betting sport in the United States, and the United Kennel Club created formal rules and sanctioned referees. Fights were held in taverns and halls, and railroads would sometimes offer special fares to passengers traveling to well-publicized events. The observer of a Brooklyn dogfight in 1876 described its spectators as a “villainous-looking set … more inhuman in appearance than the dogs … a crowd of brutal wretches whose conduct stamps them as beneath the struggling beasts.” Unsurprisingly, perhaps, most dogfighters were men in typically macho working-class professions: police officers, soldiers, and firefighters. When dogfighting became illegal in the 1930s and ’40s, it was driven underground, where it continues to thrive, despite its being classed as a felony in all fifty states.

“Let dogs delight to bark and bite,” begins a hymn by the English theologian Isaac Watts. This is the line usually taken by defenders of legalized dogfighting—that dogs naturally exult in their strength and are eager for combat; that fighting, in other words, is “in their nature.” I know there are fighting rings in Baltimore, and I sometimes worry Grisby might be stolen for use as bait. Pet theft is apparently on the rise in the city, though since it’s lumped in with other kinds of property theft, it’s difficult to know how widespread it really is.

Such theft is certainly not as common as it was in nineteenth-century London, when substantial ransoms would be asked for the animals’ safe return. The most notorious of these mercenary pet pilferers was a gang whose members called themselves “the Fancy.” Their modus operandi was to wait until the dog was momentarily unattended, lure the unsuspecting creature—usually with liver mixed with myrrh or opium, or sometimes with a bitch in heat—then shove the poor animal in a sack and disappear into the crowd. When the gang’s demands weren’t met, the dog’s paws or even its head would be delivered to its owner. Flush, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s spaniel, was kidnapped three times by the Fancy, and each time she unhesitatingly and immediately paid the ransom (see FLUSH). Who can blame her?

Still, when I asked an animal control officer whether I was taking a risk by leaving Grisby tied up outside a Starbucks, he looked amused. “No risk at all,” he assured me, condescendingly. “Anybody that’s involved in illegal activities is going to want to stay under the radar as much as possible. If they wanted dogs as bait, they’re not going to steal one off the street. For one thing, you can just go and get a mutt from the pound—this city’s full of people trying to get rid of dogs they can’t afford to keep. Another thing—if you steal a purebred, it’s probably going to have a microchip and it’s going to be worth some money, which bumps it up from a theft to a felony. Nobody’s going to take those kinds of risks for what’s at stake.”

I felt foolish. When you think about it, the idea of gangsters emerging from the ghetto to steal “our” innocent pets is really absurd; what’s more, it bespeaks all kinds of race and class anxieties. These sensitive issues also saturate the discourse around pit bull “rescue” campaigns, in which dogs are taken from young black men in the city’s run-down neighborhoods, inoculated, bathed, “altered,” given friendly names, adopted by middle-class families, and taken to live in the suburbs. We do to the dogs what we really want to do to the barbarians who breed them: make them submit.

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