Why man’s best friend has always the been the dog
Rudyard Kipling called the dog ‘the First Friend’, because dogs came in from the wild woods to help man hunt, and also to guard his cave at night – in exchange for food, of course. The author of the Just So Stories gave the dog the additional task of chasing his psychological opposite, the aloof cat – but failed to note that as well as marauders, the dog keeps loneliness at bay. And that’s how it’s been since well before records were kept.
Lady Hamilton with her favourite pooch
On the walls of the Chauvet cave in the Ardeche region of France, palaeolithic artists 35,000 years ago painted animals. There are no dogs, but archaeologists have identified footprints and paw prints made 25,000 years ago, standing next to each other – perhaps looking together at the images made 10,000 years earlier. For the distinguished cultural historian Professor Thomas W. Laqueur, this is ‘the first evidence of a doglike creature doing something with a human’.
He imagines, ‘a boy and a doggish creature together… near the beginning of our recorded relationship with animals and with representational art’. This is just one of countless magical and erudite insights given in this superbly illustrated and beautifully written book. It explores why dogs feature more than any other animal (even horses) in the way we humans have pictured ourselves through history – and does so with a deep knowledge, energised by the author’s obvious love for our four-legged friends.
Living alongside us in all their roles – from herding dog to pampered lapdog – dogs have always borne witness to human life. Walk through any gallery of medieval art and you will notice the face in the corner of so many paintings – the canine, usually white or brown, ever-present, while gods, saints, aristocrats and martyrs fulfil their fates. The dogs enhance composition, add humour or pathos, and make unheard statements – like the adorable terrier that seems to say ‘Take me for a walk’ in Carpaccio’s St Augustine In His Study.
Laqueur is in no doubt that ‘Dogs are there because of the emotional work they do: they humanise humans.’ He gives a telling example: in Homer’s great poem The Odyssey (written about 2,750 years ago) when Odysseus returns to his island home after 20 years away, the only living thing to recognise him is his dog Argos. The ancient, neglected creature wags its tail with joy and then dies. His loyalty moves and sustains the wandering hero.
That’s what dogs do; the devotion of their ‘gaze’ is never in doubt to the author. Laqueur explores the wolf heritage, zoology, anthropological research and many other pathways that lead us to why dogs were socialised by humans and humans softened by dogs. We evolved together, within various cultures all over the world, to mutual benefit.
Writer Franz Kafka photographed with his beloved German Shepherd
No wonder dogs have played such a significant place in art. The artist’s gaze alights on the dog and the dog’s gaze stares right back – as if to say, ‘We’re in this together.’
One example is Jan Van Eyck’s enigmatic masterpiece in the National Gallery, The Arnolfini Portrait. For years art historians have debated the exact meaning of this painting, ostensibly showing a couple getting married … or, wait, is she pregnant? What’s not in doubt is the presence of the little brown dog standing solidly at the front – the only creature looking directly out of the picture at us, the viewers. It’s easy to see him as a symbol of fidelity, but Laqueur adds the more down-to-earth thought that he is ‘a creature of home’. He identifies it as ‘the couple’s dog’ but I beg to differ – this hairy little toy is a lapdog for sure, which means he belongs to Madam.
No matter who the sitter, or how grand the velvets, silks, lace and furs that adorn them, the men and women of portrait history chose to be painted with their dogs.
The twinkle in a tiny eye as the small dog sits complacently on an elegant lap, the paw raised in protection or supplication on a master’s knee, the pent up energy of the hunting dog just raring to go, the devotion of the collie mourning his master… all express different versions of the essential relationship between sitter and animal. You wonder if it was hard to keep them still, or whether a titbit had to be hidden within all the finery.
Laqueur guides us through the history of art and the relationship between dogs and humans. There is sorrow, of course – for dogs do share the emotions of the people they live with, causing heartbreak on both sides when death takes one or the other. He reminds us that in many cultures, dogs have been seen as important enough to be ‘psychopomps’ – those who guide the souls of the dead to other worlds.
Necessarily he raises the issue of ‘bad dogs’ – for example, the dogs used to chase and attack enslaved people. Such dogs, he asserts, are made lethal by wicked men. The same chapter, Dogs And The Moral Imagination, engages with terrible and pitiful images of dog vivisection, which aroused the consciences of all who saw them. It’s a tour de force of empathy.
The Dog’s Gaze is the kind of volume you’ll return to again and again, learning something new each time. The erudite academic writer has the heart to include pictures of his German grandfather with his doberman, his mother’s various dogs, and his own weimaraner Rudi, which lay at his side all through the writing and died as the book was being completed. That dog-love gives this marvellous book its energy.
Those of us who share it will approve Thomas Laqueur’s quotation from a short story by the Czech writer Franz Kafka – whose companion was a German shepherd. Attempting to work out the links between dogs and humans, the canine narrator concludes, ‘All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained within the dog.’
There you have the mystery in ‘the dog’s gaze’. They know us, you see. They just do.