Citizen Canine

Citizen Canine It is often said that people come to resemble their dogs, and dogs their masters. But we humans do not stop at searching for reflections of our individual qualities in our canine companions, the author writes. We are also eager to find the representa- tive virtues of entire nations and ethnic groups—and therein lies a tail. by Edward Tenner ften I walk or run around a half-mile the children speak to their parents and Opath near my apartment, a simple among themselves in English. We say that asphalt loop encircling soccer and baseball these families are becoming “naturalized.” fields, playgrounds, and basketball courts. Their dogs are newcomers, too; indeed, so Morris Davison Park is the green of a glob- are all dogs with owners, even if the dogs’ al village. Professional urbanists and cultur- ancestors have been on American soil for a al critics may deplore our landscape of gar- century or more. The dogs, however, will den apartment complexes (like mine), never be entirely naturalized. They are, in housing tracts, and shopping centers, but a sense, perpetual newcomers. my neighborhood travels show that families For all their emotional intimacy with from all over the world love it. People with owners and their families, dogs remain origins throughout Europe, in East and conditional citizens. Americans without South Asia, in the Middle East, in the criminal records need not register with the Caribbean and Central America all happily authorities, as Europeans often must, but gather to walk, talk, play, and rest here. To in most places they do have to register see their cosmopolitan soccer teams on a their dogs. It would take a four-legged spring or summer afternoon is to witness Foucault to anatomize our elaborate the beginnings of a fresh transformation of regime of surveillance over dogs—the American identity. taxes, the tags, the inoculations, and above Bigotry and ethnic tensions are not dead, all the human control of reproduction that and Plainsboro, New Jersey, is no utopia, has made possible the profusion of canine but the congenial scene at my local park is physical and mental traits. confirmation of what modern genetics has The dog’s conditional legal status is only revealed, the unity of the human species. the beginning. Like any greenhorn, it must The dogs that accompany my fellow citi- learn, often painfully, the ways of its hosts. zens are also conscious that they form a sin- It may be spared the need for table man- gle species. They vary far more in size, ners, but it must learn human conceptions color, and temperament than we people do, of appropriate behavior. It is expected to but in their vivid and seemingly indiscrimi- modify its innate concepts of territoriality nate interest in one another they betray no to suit the human propensity toward socia- apparent breed consciousness. (Chihua- bility, to refrain from jumping on dinner huas are said to prefer their own kind, but it guests, and to respect the otherness of the is more likely that they are simply, and sen- postal carrier’s uniform instead of consid- sibly, most interested in other small dogs.) ering it a provocation. When we pet some Many of my foreign-born neighbors are adorable puppy, we are also educating it. already Americans, and still others are well Reared in isolation, many dogs become on their way to Americanization. Already aggressive or shy, or indeed both at once. Citizen Canine 71 The burden of learning does not, how- years of archaeology, genetic analysis, and ever, fall only on the dog nation. Children documentary research still needed. equally learn the ways of an alien folk. Specialists question many of the assertions Children must come not to fear dogs, yet of breed histories, such as the close kinship they also must learn rules of caution, such of the Tibetan Mastiff and the Neapolitan as not approaching an unfamiliar dog Mastiff, or the Egyptian ancestry of all without asking the owner. They must avoid greyhounds and other sight hounds. running from a dog. When they are older, (Independent origins are more likely.) The they may learn the disconcerting fact that Peruvian Inca Orchid, a nearly bald variety the sight of a running child may trigger a said to have been kept in luxury and pro- hunting response in dogs, including some tected from the sun by the rulers of the small, cute breeds. Of course, they may Inca Empire, appears similar enough to also learn how much cleaner a dog’s the Xolo, or Mexican Hairless, that mouth is than a human mouth. The worst Mexican fanciers do not recognize it as a bite is a human bite, my mother said. separate breed. Both in turn are closely Science has proved her right, as usual. related to the Chinese Crested, but it is not clear when and in which direction the umanity, unlike dogdom, has not ancestors of these breeds were transported. Hbeen satisfied with the distinctions between the two conjoined species. In the ome breeds are of more recent, and last hundred years or so, it has increasing- Smore reliably known, origin. The ly mapped its own political and ethnic Teutonic Dachshund has Gallic Basset identities onto the nation of dog. Out of Hound blood. The Australian Shepherd the variegated world of dog breeding and was developed by Americans, possibly training, it has extracted symbols of history from the stock of Basque herdsmen. and character. (Ironically, the “native” dingo, which long A cultivated, telepathic dog might give ago crossed to Australia from Eurasia, is an amusing interview. It might quote reviled by European Australians as a live- David Starr Jordan, the ichthyologist who stock pest, accused in one celebrated case was Stanford University’s first president: of stealing and killing an infant.) “When a dog barks at the moon, then it is Our canine informant might continue religion; but when he barks at strangers, it that dogs are most comfortable when they is patriotism!” But human politics, it might enjoy a close working bond with people in a remark, is, was, and will remain meaning- given terrain performing a certain job— less to its kind: ubi bene ibi patria. Where patrolling and defending a territory, hunt- my kibble is, there is my fatherland. Dogs ing—or simply sitting in a human lap. Each indeed have special human loyalties, but of the dozens of types of herding dogs in the these precede the rise of nation-states by world is accustomed to a certain landscape hundreds of years. They have been spe- and specific sizes of sheep or cattle. Indus- cially bred by different kinds of groups— trialization indirectly promoted still other classes, occupations, and trades—for par- breeds. Factory workers of the River Aire in ticular uses: sight hounds, retrievers, herd- Yorkshire bred large terriers for chasing rats ing dogs, watchdogs, even draft animals, and pursuing (often forbidden) game, creat- are attached respectively to nobles and ing the ancestors of today’s gentrified hunters, sheep raisers, property owners, Airedales. (English gamekeepers, in turn, and small tradespeople. How can a dog crossed bulldogs with mastiffs to create a trace geographic affiliations, it might well new breed, the bull mastiff, that could take ask, if human beings are so confused? down a poacher and hold him without Scholarship and scientific research on devouring him.) The high spirits prized by dog origins remain in their infancy, with today’s Airedale breeders and trainers reflect > Edward Tenner, a former Wilson Center Fellow, is a visitor in the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University. He is the author of Tech Speak (1986) and Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Conse- quences (1996). Copyright © 1998 by Edward Tenner. 72 WQ Summer 1998 “Venus” the bulldog was the ship’s mascot of a British destroyer during World War II. the raffish culture of the dog’s original blue- The upper classes of Europe and North collar enthusiasts. America have been transporting dogs for When European settlers in the New centuries—George Washington ordered a World and other outposts began creating Dalmatian from England—but few people new varieties around the 18th century, they could afford to do so before efficient trans- were not exercising their fancy but blending portation by rail, road, and air was generally the structure and behavior of existing available. Our cultivated guide dog might breeds to suit new conditions: thus the conclude its remarks by reminding us that Newfoundland and Chesapeake Bay the same pathways helped make heartworm retrievers and such distinctively British lega- a national rather than a southern problem. cies as the Rhodesian Ridgeback and the New Zealand Huntaway. Folk breeders ven the most learned poodle proba- paid no attention to borders. Mark Derr, a Ebly could not analyze the subject fur- leading dog writer, speculates that the ther. It is one thing to recognize that peo- Catahoula Leopard Dog descends from ple have changed dogs and quite another colonists’ curs and indigenous dogs, with to understand what these changes had to traces of red wolf and Spanish Mastiff do with human self-consciousness. And mixed in. But while it is found along the even to people, the beginnings of national Gulf of Mexico from Mexico into Florida, dogdom were gradual. The literary scholar Louisiana has claimed it as its state dog Harriet Ritvo has studied how the abolition since 1979 and pointedly employs Cata- of bullbaiting in the 1830s led fanciers to houlas as guard dogs on state property. begin the bulldog’s transformation to Today, even as the cult of national dogs house pet and competitive show animal.

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