An A–Z of Exceptional Dogs. Mikita Brottman

      IT’S REMOTELY POSSIBLE that, during her final years in Florence, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog Flush might have encountered Giallo, the Pomeranian belonging to the English poet Walter Savage Landor, the Brownings’ friend and neighbor. In his younger days, Landor had lived in Florence for many years with his wife and children; he returned to England in middle age. Then, in 1858, as an old man of eighty-three, the poet found himself accused of libel, and escaped to Florence to avoid the resulting scandal. Here, the Brownings helped find accommodation close to their own home, the Casa Guidi, for this elderly gentleman and his frisky little dog.

      In 1844, when he was living in Bath, Landor had a Pomeranian named Pomero, with fluffy white fur, bright eyes, and a yellow tail (Landor was said to be the model for Mr. Boythorn in Bleak House, with Pomero transformed into a canary). A friend who knew Landor said he concentrated on the dog “all the playful affectionateness that made up so large a portion of his character. He loved that noisy little beast like a child, and would talk nonsense to him as to a child.” “Not for a million of money would I sell him,” wrote the poet. “A million would not make me at all happier, and the loss of Pomero would make me miserable for life.” This loss came all too soon. “Seven years we lived together, in more than amity,” mourned Landor, after his pet’s death. “He loved me to his heart and what a heart it was! Mine beats audibly while I write about him.”

      When the poet returned to Florence in later life, his friend the sculptor William Wetmore Story gave him another Pomeranian, and this affectionate creature, named Giallo after his yellow fur, became Landor’s closest companion for his remaining six years of life, causing him to be known by the locals as “il vecchio con quel bel canino” (“the old man with the beautiful dog”). Pomeranians are known for their loyalty and playful natures, but they also have less familiar advantages. In her 1891 essay “Dogs and Their Affections,” the English novelist Ouida wrote, “The Pomeranian is a most charming small dog, and … there is an electric quality in his hair which repels dust and dirt.”

      In his lodgings on the Via Nunziatina, Landor soon became well known to English and American visitors, who described how Giallo’s white nose would push through the door ahead of his eccentric master, and how Landor would take a seat in his armchair and hold forth on politics and literature, attributing his most controversial opinions to his dog. “A better critic than Giallo is not to be found in all Italy, though I say it who shouldn’t,” he claimed. “An approving wag of his tail is worth all the praise of all the Quarterlies published in the United Kingdom.”

      This popular and intelligent dog inspired many verses, including a couplet written on the occasion when Landor reached out and discovered his dog’s nose was hot (“He is foolish who supposes/Dogs are ill that have hot noses”). Giallo was also the subject of the touching poem “To My Dog,” written in August 1860, in which Landor acknowledged the fact that he would be in the grave long before his companion (“Giallo! I shall not see thee dead/Nor raise a stone above thy head”). He was right: Landor died in 1864, and Giallo lived on for another eight years in the care of his friend Contessa Baldelli. (“Poor dog! I miss his tender faithfulness,” wrote the contessa when Giallo finally died in 1872.)

      Landor obviously enjoyed using his dog as a mouthpiece for controversial political and literary opinions. Since the poet’s sentiments were largely unpopular—he had a patrician contempt for the masses, for one thing—it was an inspired strategy to attribute his own words to a fluffy Pomeranian. As Virginia Woolf no doubt discovered while writing Flush, there’s a special pleasure to be had in putting words into a dog’s mouth—and many others have done so, though rarely with Woolf’s eloquence.

      For the most part, canine correspondences are private games between friends or family members. On December 3, 1855, Jane Carlyle, the wife of Thomas Carlyle, noted in her diary that she wrote “a pretty long letter” from her dog Nero to her friend Mrs. Twisleton (“Oh Madam; unless I open my heart to someone; I shall go mad—and bite!”). The dogs in Sigmund Freud’s family “wrote” birthday poems to their master every year, rhymes that were actually composed by Freud’s daughter Anna. According to the author Roger Grenier, Marcel Proust wrote regular letters to Zadig, the dog that belonged to his lover Reynaldo Hahn (“My dear Zadig, I love you very much because you are soooo sad and full of love just like me”). It’s not difficult to interpret these communications as ways of expressing separation anxiety and other infantile feelings that are normally suppressed.

      Things get more complicated, however, when people speak on their dogs’ behalf in a more public way, especially online. These days, there are thousands of journals on the Internet purportedly written by dogs, many linked to dog-themed social networking sites like Dogster or Dogbook (if Walter Savage Landor were alive today, he might well have blogged as Giallo). Their voices are uncannily similar: playful, enthusiastic, and endearingly dim-witted—the voice of a loving but backward child. This is also the personality attributed to Clark Griswold, the German shepherd star of a viral YouTube video in which the dog is teased playfully by his owner about not getting his favorite treats. Clark’s reactions, dubbed by his owner, are absurdly disconsolate. His engaging credulity is shared by the unnamed bulldog of the website Text from Dog, whose messages to his owner swing from engagingly exuberant (“I have to tell you … You accidentally fed me TWICE this morning … I GOT TWO BREAKFASTS … THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY ENTIRE LIFE”), to coyly passive-aggressive (“Who’s MORE important: ME or your girlfriend?”). There seems to be some kind of unspoken agreement that, in terms of personality, dogs are adorably dense (as opposed, perhaps, to smart, snooty cats).

      According to Stanley Coren, a dog behaviorist and psychologist at the University of British Columbia, dog blogging is “a sign of affection,” and “trying to adopt a dog’s point of view can be a healthy exercise” for pet owners. “If we love them dearly, we’re always trying to crawl inside their heads and figure out what’s going on,” suggests Coren. “And if we love them dearly enough, we want other people to share in the dog’s expertise.” This, to me, seems an oddly disingenuous response to a phenomenon that begs for deeper consideration. Surely it’s obvious—is it not?—that these dog blogs do not actually “adopt a dog’s point of view” or “share a dog’s expertise.” The fact is, dogs have very little to do with them. These daily chronicles, with their infantilized voices, present-tense observations, and phonetic spellings, are produced by and for adult Homo sapiens. There are no pets online, just projections and displacements, human fantasies, and a willful return to the affections and appetites of childhood.

      In Pack of Two, Caroline Knapp quotes Susan Cohen, the director of counseling at New York’s Animal Medical Center, who is fascinated by the way people talk about (and on behalf of) their dogs. “When someone offers what sounds like a human interpretation of a dog’s behavior,” says Cohen, “it gives you something to explore. It might not tell you a lot about the dog, but it helps tell you what the person is thinking, what they’re hoping, fearing, or feeling.” When the dog is owned by a couple, for example, its voice can be used by the “parents” to accuse each other of neglect (“Mommy found my long-lost tennis ball—you know, the one that Daddy lost and didn’t bother to replace”) or to portray themselves as unconditionally lovable (“Oh, Daddy’s dirty socks smell so good!”). At the most basic level, the “dog” here may be the blogger’s infant self, beloved by Mother without reservation, no matter how odd he or she might look or smell. In the purported form of a dog, the infant self can express needs and feelings that the adult ego might, with good reason, want to distance itself from. On the Internet, no one knows you’re not a dog.

      The same dynamic also applies to in-person interactions. Arnold Arluke and Clinton R. Sanders note how pet owners, when “deciphering” their animal’s symptoms for veterinarians, will “explain” their companion’s moods (“She’s upset that we have a new baby”), speak dyadically (“We aren’t feeling well today”), or speak for the animal itself (“Oh, Doctor, are you going to give me a shot?”). Whether online or face-to-face, to speak in the voice of your dog is to engage in an act of self-deceiving ventriloquism, allowing you to be at the same time both beloved child and adoring parent. In this voice, you can buffer complaints, elicit apologies, confess wrongdoings, and mediate