Canine Connections, Atop a Yosemite waterfall or Peering From a Wicker Carriage
A new book from the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library gives fresh meaning to the term “dog days” by celebrating the powerful connections between people and their canine companions.
Everyday Dogs shows the special bonds between humans and their pets. The idea for
Everyday Dogs: A Perpetual Calendar for Birthdays and Other Notable Dates by Mary Scott, Susan Snyder (Heyday Books) arose unexpectedly in 2005 when Mary Scott and Susan Snyder were sifting through the vast Pictorial Collection at The Bancroft for images for an exhibit on California women.
“By chance we began finding some wonderful photos of dogs with their people,” said Scott, graphic designer for the campus’s Doe and Moffitt libraries. And they found more, and more.
Among the hundreds of photos discovered by Scott and Snyder, public services director at The Bancroft, those chosen for the 152-page book had to relay “a still palpable connection between the people and their dogs,” said Scott. “That’s what a photo needed to make the final cut — be it a crusty old prospector or a famous newspaperman,” she said.
The cover is a professional photo by noted 19th-century California photographer Carleton E. Watkins, of a dog named Guardian peering alertly from a wicker carriage, but the book contains snapshots, too. Altogether, the book contains 75 evocative black-and-white photos taken between roughly 1870 and the 1940s.
The images are of ordinary and extraordinary people and their pooches at home, in the wild, on the farm, atop a Yosemite waterfall, and occasionally even in a formal photo studio.
There’s a 1891 shot of a boy dressed in a suit of short pants, jacket and tie with his arm draped over the neck of his “best buddy Spaniel,” who seems to be mugging for the camera. In another, media tycoon William Randolph Hearst sits with his dachshund Helen by an elegant fountain at his castle in San Simeon, Calif. A snapshot shows a boy standing in front of a fence, with a dog almost as big as himself. A few images show 1906 San Francisco earthquake victims in their makeshift tent cities, family dogs in tow.
Accompanying the images are literary tributes and warm, often humorous and insightful observations and quirky quotes – also found in The Bancroft collections — about the human-canine relationship by letter writers, journal keepers and famed scribes such as California poet Robinson Jeffers (owner of Haig the House Dog), Gertrude Stein (pal of Basket) and Jack London (companion of Rollo and creator of the legendary
The Call of the Wild by Jack London sled dog Buck).
A sampling of quotes and proverbs includes:
“My goal in life is to be as good of a person as my dog already thinks I am.” Anonymous.
“Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship.” Ambrose Bierce.
“All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.” Franz Kafka.
“No matter how little money and how few possessions you own, having a dog makes you rich.” Louis Sabin.
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