Man's Best Friend: The Fashion in Dogs

1922

THE DOG SURVIVES

Fashions in dogs are changing. You may have noticed lately that the majority of lost-and-found ads, dealing with canines, are Airedales that have strayed from home. The Airedale craze is refreshing, after the epidemic of diminutive dogs that looked like a cross between a starved rat and a dwarf giraffe. Popularity of different breeds of dogs seems travel in waves. There was an epidemic of hounds, long ago, when a man had little social standing unless his kennels housed at least five. Pug dogs had their day. So did water spaniels, fox terriers and Newfoundlands. The "Boston bull" was all the rage when the Gibson Girl's clothes and huge, bulging pompadour were in style. To a psychologist, each of these dog crazes reflected "the trend of the times." Now it's the Airedale's day — probably because it is expensive and a one-man dog.

The dog — which in the wild state never barks — is one of the few animals that have accompanied man, in friendship, during the long march out of barbarism.

Originally dogs, jackals, foxes and wolves belonged to the same family. The origin of domestic or tame dogs is lost in the mists that enshroud the period of the cave man. Professor Shaler's researches in dogology led him to believe that dogs were first domesticated to provide an emergency food supply during famine. A more plausible guess is that dogs were tamed to help gratify man's craving for submissive affection, also to tickle his vanity. Our primitive ancestors, no doubt, felt very much pleased with themselves when they contemplated the dogs they had subdued from the wild state. Nevertheless, the dog has accompanied man into so-called civilization, and in return has been rewarded with a maze of legislation concerning his legal status, rights, ownership and conduct.

The oldest monuments of India and Egypt show that ancient man reveled in ownership of Fido, Towser, Bruno and Bob. Today we have him in magazine stories and the news, which correspond to the carvings on monuments of long ago. How the dog has survived man's passion for exterminating animal life, is a riddle, despite the affection with which he rewards kindness to him. That's why the study of dogs is inseparable from the study of human nature.

—Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Wisconsin, June 24, 1922, page 3.