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 22Oct 3.
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.
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.
Miss Bianca
Big Red. Old Yeller. Lassie-Come-Home. One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: It is in the nature of a Cocker to be be a star no matter how small the part.
Omnes Omnibus
Iggy. I Wanna Be Your Dog.
schrodingers_cat
OMG Tunch’s blog has gone to the dogs. He won’t be amused!
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.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: https://youtu.be/xjDLc-8tW2I
Ishmael
Asta, starring in The Thin Man series, with his co-stars William Powell and Myrna Loy.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Lily, Rosie, and Thurston should be fine with it. As should the ghost of Walter.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Asta.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I think it’s been 5 years since John bought Walter’s house. He was such a good boy.
WaterGirl
@Ishmael: Welcome to the blog, Ishmael!
Ishmael
@WaterGirl: Thank you! Lured out of the lurker closet to comment on dogs in the movies.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Was that comment in moderation when I posted mine about Asta?
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, it was. I had already released his when I saw yours. So Ishmael beat you to it!
WaterGirl
@Ishmael: We knew we’d get you with that one. :-)
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.)
AliceBlue
Lady and the Tramp (the original)
Old Yeller (oh how I cried!)
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.
VeniceRiley
I did love love the little dog in the new Cruella
SiubhanDuinne
Pharaoh, Isis, and Teo, successive yellow labs in Downton Abbey.
SiubhanDuinne
Can’t believe nobody has mentioned Toto, so I will.
TOTO.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: The flying monkeys are the only good thing in that movie.
dexwood
Any poker playing art lovers here?
TomatoQueen
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nonsense. Toto is the agent of truth, because he pulls the curtain back, revealing the man behind it.
dexwood
@TomatoQueen: Best take on Toto’s character ever.
Omnes Omnibus
@TomatoQueen: I stand by what I said.
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.
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.
Barbara
@Omnes Omnibus: Wow, you are spoiling for a fight! Everyone knows that Margaret Hamilton as the wicked witch is the best thing.
MomSense
The film version of Dean Spanley is a must watch.
Omnes Omnibus
@Barbara: She would have been nothing without the monkeys.
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.”
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.”
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:
And later when the besotted Mr. Pomfret meets her unexpectedly one night:
LOL. That line always tickles me. You can see, perhaps, why I so enjoy reading and rereading Sayers.
germy
(Ambrose Bierce)
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.
MomSense
@TomatoQueen:
You just blew my mind. I have not given Toto his props all these years.
raven
@Barbara: We once viewed her house in Maine.
“Excuse me, but did you just say that the Wicked Witch of the West lived there?
https://creativemainemag.com/the-good-witch-of-maine/
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!
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!
raven
The Dog in Doc Martin is great. Doc hates him but it turns out Martin Clunes is an extreme dog lover.
SiubhanDuinne
Greyfriars Bobby. Has anyone seen the statue in Edinburgh? I did, 60-some years ago, but haven’t on subsequent visits to Edinburgh.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyfriars_Bobby
Mary G
Drooly Hooch from Turner and Hooch. Asta, also too.
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.
raven
Great performances? Bohdi only howled when he heard a recording of Raven!
raven
And Lil Bit was a valiant fighter of plastic bags.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
That’s hilarious!
ETA: So’s Lil Bit taking on the fierce plastic bag. How cool that you have these video clips.
raven
Of course there is A Boy and His Dog.
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.
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
James E Powell
I loved The Littlest Hobo. We had a German Shepard – Rascal – that looked just like him.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: It was so odd, I have no idea what that was but I’d fire it up once in a while and he was on cue.
phein62
@Martin: Did make a great kids movie. My kids used to watch it all the time. Kevin Bacon voiced.
NotMax
Always make a point of paying a visit to Owney when ambling through the Smithsonian.
artem1s
I nominate White Fang as the best story of a dog who after years of abuse at the hands of beastly owners finally finds his forever home.
I also love the Rabbit’s bard telling of Rowsby Woof and The Fairy WogDog in Watership Down.
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.)
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!”
raven
This outa get someone all bent out of shape
A Few of Our Favorite Garden and Gun Good Dog Columns
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
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.
cope
Hard to believe we’re this far into the thread and Buck in “Call Of The Wild” hasn’t been mentioned.
piratedan
Wee Jock from Hamish MacBeth…
Sam from Hondo
raven
@artem1s: What about Soupy Sales and White Fang?
NotMax
@Brachiator
“Could ya maybe get a bigger basket, kid? Cripes, it’s cramped in there.”
dmsilev
@cope: Staying with Jack London, the unnamed dog in “To Build a Fire”.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: It was a joke. Also too, Cats rule. Dogs drool.
NotMax
@raven
Only fair to also mention Black Tooth.
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!
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.”
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.
Van Buren
I would vote for Precious, as I had a Bichon when the movie came out.
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 :)
zhena gogolia
Sharik in Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog.
Laska in Anna Karenina.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: This is not your room. This is not your room. This is not your room.
Loved that movie.
dmsilev
It’s only directly on-stage very briefly, but the titular Hound of the Baskervilles deserves a mention.
WaterGirl
@raven: And I’m sobbing again. That is so sweet and so heartbreaking at the same time.
debbie
@raven:
I love that dog! He always gets his way!
debbie
@TomatoQueen:
I loved Toto too. He certainly had the most sense.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Suppose someone ought to bring up Laika and company.
Bunter
The Virginia Lanier bloodhound series and Best in Show, both required reading/viewing for bloodhound people.
NotMax
Then there’s poor Wellington, the plot hook for the book and subsequent play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time .
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…
Miss Bianca
@RedDirtGirl: I LOVED Junket! Great book, great character.
Ivan X
I mean the zombie dog monsters in Resident Evil, amirite?
Craig
Huan the Hound of Valinor in Tolkien is a damn hero.
SiubhanDuinne
One of the first books I ever owned (had an author-inscribed copy, thanks to my family’s bookstore) was Leonore Harris’ Big Lonely Dog. The illustrations are gorgeous.
https://www.amazon.com/Big-lonely-dog-Nursery-books/dp/B0007E4U1Y/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=harris+big+lonely+dog&qid=1624580731&sr=8-1
Repatriated
@TomatoQueen:
And we mustn’t forget that without him, the rains down in Africa would never have been properly blessed.
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.
dexwood
@Ivan X: Scarey beasts. Agree with you.
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).
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.
Delk
Three years ago last Monday we said goodbye to our sweet Gav. Dogs deserve more than five years.
Uncle Omar
@SiubhanDuinne: Bobby was there in 2013 when we roamed around that part of town.
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.
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.
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.
Tehanu
@SiubhanDuinne:
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.
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
The immortal Petey from the Little Rascals.
billcinsd
From the comics
https://www.gocomics.com/poochcafe/2003/05/05
2. Satchel from Get Fuzzy
https://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy/1999/09/13
Juju
Air Bud.
Tehanu
@billcinsd:
I forgot about Satchel! Love him to bits!