The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful for students interested in biology, sociology, and related fields.

The Invention of the Modern Dog: Breed and Blood in Victorian Britain is by the English historians of science Michael Worboys, Julie-Marie Strange, and Neil Pemberton.

The TU Library collection has many other books about different aspects of canine life.

Professor Michael Worboys is Emeritus Professor at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), Division of Medical Education, The University of Manchester. UK.  Professor Julie-Marie Strange teaches modern British history at Durham University, UK, and Dr. Neil Pemberton is a research fellow at the CHSTM.

Their book argues that during the reign of England’s Queen Victoria, ideas about dogs changed, making dogs the domestic companions that they have remained in modern times.

There were varieties of dogs long before the Victorian era, but not breeds in the way they are discussed today.

Art works from the 1700s show that pug dogs, for example, had longer muzzles and longer legs than the short and round pugs seen today.

This is because during the 1800s, dogs were transformed into products and designed to look cuter and more appealing to customers. In this way, modern breeds were developed. So modern dogs can be called thoroughly Victorian inventions.

Another example is the Newfoundland dog, bred during the Victorian era to have a wide head and a curving tail. Black coats were preferred. Soon breeding changed some dogs to the point where they were dramatically different:

Charles Darwin noted in the second edition of The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1875) that Newfoundland dogs had been so much modified that… [they do] not now closely resemble any existing native dog in Newfoundland.

Dog shows were one reason why breeds were changed so much. In 1862, on the occasion of a

Monster Dog Show” in Islington, the United Kingdom, Charles Dickens wrote to complain that while the dogs on show were privileged and treated very well, just outside the show in nearby streets, other dogs had difficult lives and needed rescue and adoption.

Here are some thoughts about dogs by authors, some of whom are represented in the TU Library collection:

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, The Cynic’s Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

A man saw a dog eating mud from (the severity of) thirst. So, that man took a shoe (and filled it) with water and kept on pouring the water for the dog till it quenched its thirst. So Allah approved of his deed and made him to enter Paradise.

• Hadith, translation of Sahih Bukhari, Book 4, Hadith 39

“Most people believe that when a dog howls near a house it forebodes death, for it is said a dog can distinguish the awful form of Azra’il, the Angel of Death.”

• Richard Burton’s Arabia, vol I p 290. in : Hughes, T. P. (1986). Dictionary of Islam

Near this spot

Are deposited the Remains of one

Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,

Strength without Insolence,

Courage without Ferocity,

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

• Lord Byron, Inscription on the monument of a Newfoundland dog (1808).

Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.

• The Bible, Matthew xv. 27.

The time comes to every dog when it ceases to care for people merely for biscuits or bones, or even for caresses, and walks out of doors. When a dog really loves, it prefers the person who gives it nothing, and perhaps is too ill ever to take it out for exercise, to all the liberal cooks and active dog-boys in the world.

• Frances Power Cobbe, The Confessions of a Lost Dog (London: Griffith & Farran, 1867), pp. 15-16.

I could discern clearly, even at that early age, the essential difference between people who are kind to dogs and people who really love them.

• Frances Power Cobbe, The Confessions of a Lost Dog (London: Griffith & Farran, 1867), p. 19.

Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them.

• Diogenes of Sinope. Stobaeus,

There are three faithful friends,

an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

• Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack (1734).

And just as he has the sense of virtue, so also he has the sense of sin. A cat may be taught not to do certain things, but if it is caught out and flees, it flees not from shame, but from fear. But the shame of a dog touches an abyss of misery as bottomless as any human emotion. He has fallen out of the state of grace, and nothing but the absolution and remission of his sin will restore him to happiness.

• Alfred George Gardiner, A Dithyramb on a Dog, Leaves in the Wind (1920)

Love in animals, has not for its only object animals of the same species, but extends itself farther, and comprehends almost every sensible and thinking being. A dog naturally loves a man above his own species, and very commonly meets with a return of affection.

• David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions

It’s funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn’t it?

• Eleanor Porter, Pollyanna (1912).

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

• Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948)

The dog has been taught to pay attention; as long as he pays attention, he may escape his chain.

• Sumerian proverb, Collection V at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

The more I see the representatives of the people, the more I love my dogs.

• Alphonse de Lamartine. Quoted in a letter from Comte Alfred d’Orsay to John Forster (1850).

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)