Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Let me file that under fuck it.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

You are here: Home / Guest Posts / Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Dogs

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Dogs

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In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.

After this week, BG will be on hiatus for the summer and will return on Sunday, August 22 Oct 3.

Steven Spielberg with his cocker spaniel, Elmer, who starred in Close Encounters of the Third Kind

In this week’s Medium Cool, let’s talk about dogs. More numerous even than cats, dogs appear in literature and art and pop culture from The Odyssey on.

Let’s hear about your favorite fictional portrayals or representations (visual, aural, virtual) of canines.

Reader Interactions

101Comments

  1. 1.

    WaterGirl

    Some of you may want to argue about whether Elmer “starred” in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, trying to suggest that he merely had a walk-on when people were entering or leaving the spaceship.

    Fight me.

  6. 6.

    TomatoQueen

    Argos. Fred. Charley. Pongo and Perdita. Dog Barking Time. Lupo. Skip. The people I knew who had a little terrier named Presto, who was much adored. When Presto died, he was stuffed and mounted on little wheels.

  8. 8.

    Ishmael

    Asta, starring in The Thin Man series, with his co-stars William Powell and Myrna Loy.

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Montmorency, in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog).*

    *(Yes, that’s where Connie Willis got her title.)

  19. 19.

    Martin

    Balto, sled dog who helped save Nome AK, and memorialized in Central Park, where I learned about him. Not fictional, but would have made a great fictional kids movie.

    Fictional, Ein, from Bebop, who could play chess.

  28. 28.

    Barbara

    @Martin: My daughter watched Balto so many times she could speak along (when she was 5). She loved the scene where he howls and howled along with him.

  29. 29.

    Almost Retired

    My Grand-dog is a lovable pit bull, who would be a scene-stealer if she were on the screen.  She’s a flip-flop chewer in real life.  Therefore, I nominate Brandy, Brad Pitt’s pittie companion in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

  33. 33.

    Nutmeg again

    Of course, a Newfoundland contribution. Byron’s epitaph to his dog Boatswain. There are plenty of other Newfers in literature, including Emily Dickinson’s Carlo, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Leo.

    ”

    Near this Spot
    are deposited the Remains of one
    who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
    Strength without Insolence,
    Courage without Ferosity,
    and all the virtues of Man without his Vices.
    This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
    if inscribed over human Ashes,
    is but a just tribute to the Memory of
    BOATSWAIN, a DOG,
    who was born in Newfoundland May 1803
    and died at Newstead Nov. 18th, 1808.

    When some proud Son of Man returns to Earth,
    Unknown to Glory but upheld by Birth,
    The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,
    And storied urns record who rests below:
    When all is done, upon the Tomb is seen
    Not what he was, but what he should have been.
    But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend,
    The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
    Whose honest heart is still his Master’s own,
    Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
    Unhonour’d falls, unnotic’d all his worth,
    Deny’d in heaven the Soul he held on earth:
    While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
    And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.
    Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
    Debas’d by slavery, or corrupt by power,
    Who knows thee well, must quit thee with disgust,
    Degraded mass of animated dust!
    Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
    Thy tongue hypocrisy, thy heart deceit!
    By nature vile, ennobled but by name,
    Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
    Ye! who behold perchance this simple urn,
    Pass on, it honors none you wish to mourn.
    To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise;
    I never knew but one—and here he lies.”

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    Strongheart or Rin Tin Tin? Discuss*.

    *not a real invitation
    :)

    Favorite TV dog shall forever be a tie between Cleo and the small screen Topper‘s Neil.

    Anyone else remember the kids’ book Clarence the TV Dog?

    And strictly for a quick grin, “Tralfaz?! Blech.”

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Of course I can’t let a Medium Cool thread go by without challenging myself to think of an example in one of Dorothy L. Sayers’ books. From Gaudy Night, I’ve always loved the secondary plot line of the Oxford undergraduate who develops a crush on the protagonist, Harriet Vane, and lends himself to a couple of canine comparisons:

    “Come and have tea. Or a drink or something. Come this afternoon. Do. Just to show there’s no ill-feeling.”

    Harriet was opening her mouth to say No, when she looked at Mr. Pomfret, and her heart softened. He had the appeal of a very young dog of a very large breed—a kind of amiable absurdity.

    “All right,” said Harriet. “I will. Thank you very much.”

    And later when the besotted Mr. Pomfret meets her unexpectedly one night:

    He loved her, he adored her, he was intensely miserable, he could neither work nor play games for thinking of her, if she refused him he didn’t know what he should do with himself, she must have seen, she must have realized—he wanted to stand between her and all the world— Mr. Pomfret was six feet three and broad and strong in proportion.

    “Please don’t do that,” said Harriet, feeling as though she were feebly saying “Drop it, Caesar,” to somebody else’s large and disobedient Alsatian.

    LOL. That line always tickles me. You can see, perhaps, why I so enjoy reading and rereading Sayers.

  36. 36.

    germy

    DOG, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival—an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon a door-mat all day long, sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to purchase the idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of tolerant recognition.

    (Ambrose Bierce)

  37. 37.

    raven

    Still, every dog lover ought to know Virginia Woolf’s comic biography of a cocker spaniel owned by Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett—later Elizabeth Barrett Browning, of Sonnets from the Portuguese fame.

    Woolf wrote Flush “only by way of a joke” as she recovered from the mental exhaustion and depression that followed writing The Waves, one of her experimental masterpieces. Flush the dog was given to Elizabeth Barrett by another writer (Mary Russell Mitford), and Flush the biography grew out of a host of literary influences. After seeing the new comic play The Barretts of Wimpole Street in 1930, Woolf began devouring the Brownings’ published letters. Laughing at the descriptions of Flush’s antics—she too had a beloved cocker spaniel—Woolf began writing a mock-serious biography of the animal as a parody of her friend Lytton Strachey’s portraits in Eminent Victorians.

  40. 40.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Asta! Yes.

    @Martin: Oh, and Ein! Fell in love with that little guy. To the point where I’m scouting Pembroke Welsh Corgis as my next dog. There are a couple at the barn where I keep my horse and they are adorable. And great little herders!

  41. 41.

    CaseyL

    if a movie has a dog in it, there is a 75% chance I will cry.  Even if it’s a happy movie with a happy ending.

    “Old Yeller” traumatized me, along with a whole row of little kiddos, when our moms took us to see it.  My Mom had quite a time, explaining to a gaggle of hysterically sobbing kids that the dog was an actor, just like the human actors, and had not really been shot.

    “Incredible Journey” – the original, not the #$%^&U remake, which we will never speak of.  I also read the book the movie is based on, and those last few pages where the old terrier comes running over the hill to His Boy reduces me to tears just thinking about it. (*sniffle*)

    101 Dalmations, of course.  And again, read the book the movie was based on, and adored them both. Love, love, love the idea of the Twilight Barking.  And animals all across the country helping the Pongos and the 99 pups get home.

    The Albert Payson Terhune books and short stories all about dogs.  All about collies.  I think his best known was “Lad, a Dog.”  But his short story, “The Grudge,” was a dark little piece that really stuck with me.

    ETA: These are all from my youth – my extreme youth, even!

  45. 45.

    Falling Diphthong

    I remember a sci fi book–title is escaping me; I think it had time travel to dinosaur times?–where a common critique, which I agreed with after reading it, was that only the dog was a really fully fledged character. The human scientists were all paper thin and boring, but the one scientist’s dog really climbed off the page and was three-dimensional.

  48. 48.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    That’s hilarious!

    ETA: So’s Lil Bit taking on the fierce plastic bag. How cool that you have these video clips.

  50. 50.

    Amir Khalid

    Hmm. Dogs from pop culture? I can think of a fairly obscure one: Queequeg the Pomeranian, who was Dana Scully’s pet for part of season 3 on The X-Files. She got him via Clyde Bruckman in Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, named him after a character in Moby Dick, and kept him until he got eaten by the Monster of The Week in Quagmire.

  51. 51.

    Brachiator

    Canines. Let’s see

    Atomic Dog

    Deputy Dog

    There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!

    Offisa Pup from the Krazy Kat comics

    Blood in the novel and 1975 film A Boy and His Dog

    And of course, Huckleberry Hound

  52. 52.

    James E Powell

    I loved The Littlest Hobo. We had a German Shepard – Rascal – that looked just like him.

  57. 57.

    Falling Diphthong

    The Meg Langslow series by Donna Andrews features two dogs, Spike (an 8.5 lb ball of adorable fluffiness around sharp teeth and a hair trigger temper) and Tinkerbell (an extremely mellow Irish Wolf Hound). There’s a great scene where Meg’s mom has put out coordinating red dog beds for them for Xmas, and so of course Spike takes the huge one and Tinkerbell is left to curl up on the tiny bed. (The beds are heated, explaining why the dogs are willing to pose touchingly on them for hours on end.)

  58. 58.

    Kednedub

    Cano Mundi from Book of the Dun Cow, Thurber’s short stories (essays?) about his childhood pets, and my Ali, eternally remembered as “BEST Dog EVER!”

  60. 60.

    Brachiator

    @SiubhanDuinne: 

    Can’t believe nobody has mentioned Toto, so I will.

    In the later Oz stories it is revealed that Toto, like other animals in Oz, can speak, but for a time just chose not to.

  61. 61.

    cope

    Hard to believe we’re this far into the thread and Buck in “Call Of The Wild” hasn’t been mentioned.

  68. 68.

    RedDirtGirl

    Anyone remember the book Junket, about an Airedale that adopts a family? It’s out of print now, but that was a fave when I was a kid!

  69. 69.

    Betty Cracker

    Not pop culture, but the dogs in Wuthering Heights foreshadow all the human action.

    ETA: Relatable quote: “He was an old dog and fond of his ease.”

  70. 70.

    Tony Jay

    The North Runner. Okay, he’s a wolf, so sue me.

    Cried like a discreet maiden aunt upon hearing that the rakish brother of a childhood friend has passed away.

  72. 72.

    CaseyL

    @raven: More of a trash talker to plastic bags.  Boasting about what will happen if they get any closer, while not actually going any closer himself :)

  75. 75.

    dmsilev

    It’s only directly on-stage very briefly, but the titular Hound of the Baskervilles deserves a mention.

  79. 79.

    NotMax

    @zhena gogolia

    Suppose someone ought to bring up Laika and company.

    In the Soviet Union, there was less controversy. Neither the media, books in the following years, nor the public openly questioned the decision to send a dog into space. In 1998, after the collapse of the Soviet regime, Oleg Gazenko, one of the scientists responsible for sending Laika into space, expressed regret for allowing her to die:

    “Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it … We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.”

  82. 82.

    WereBear

    Two great dog actors: Higgins, aka the original Benjie, who learned a new trick every episode of Petticoat Junction.

    And the incomparable Moose, who played the original Eddie on Frasier. In the last seasons his son took over, who had similar markings, and did his best. But the magic was missing…

  88. 88.

    Yutsano

    I’m just going to come to this late.

    Nana from Peter Pan. Once again Disney screwed up a detail by making her a St Bernard. Barrie specifically said she was a Newfoundland.

  90. 90.

    TheOtherHank

    I guess I have thing for hellhounds, but I really like Dog from Good Omens and Alvin & Mohamed from Christopher Moore’s Death books (A Dirty Job and Second Hand Souls).

  91. 91.

    Trapped Lurker

    I love E.B. White’s essays, and particularly remember several about his dachshund Fred. He would “step over the threshold, stop, and smoke a cigar” while deciding whether to acquiesce to White’s desire to  take him out for a walk in the city. Then weekends at the White farm in Maine  he tangled with skunks and porcupines. White’s descriptions of their adventures are screamingly funny And full of love. He grieved long when he lost Fred.

  92. 92.

    Delk

    Three years ago last Monday we said goodbye to our sweet Gav. Dogs deserve more than five years.

  94. 94.

    Pappenheimer

    Snowy was at least as smart as Tintin and, TBH, smarter than the Thomson twins

    I can’t believe anyone mentioned Dogmatix, either. Best friend an oak tree ever had.

  95. 95.

    laura

    @Delk: dear Delk- I can’t help but think of Gav every single time I see you post.

    For me the dog that breaks my heart is Guard Dog – the loneliest of characters in the Mutts cartoon strips, he’s owned but unloved and unwelcome indoors. Still have a very soft spot for Snoopy too.

  96. 96.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @raven:  That always pops up after I go through Old Yeller, Benji, Lassie, and 101 Dalmations. I’m kinda glad that the nicer ones come to mind first.

  97. 97.

    Tehanu

    @SiubhanDuinne: ​
     

    “Please don’t do that,” said Harriet, feeling as though she were feebly saying “Drop it, Caesar,” to somebody else’s large and disobedient Alsatian.

    Glad you reminded me of that!

    I also love the dogs in C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle — not my favorite of his books, but the dogs are delightful. And Dogmatix, and Rin-Tin-Tin, and the Emperor Norton’s dogs, Bummer and Lazarus, and the Pekes in Bride of the Rat God, Buttercreme, Chang Ming, and Black Jasmine.

  98. 98.

    There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)

    The immortal Petey from the Little Rascals.

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