got on to the subject of libraries with mr d while having dinner. he looks up his college library to show me. finds out sled dogs delivered the first books when it opened. excuse me??

How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends, by Mark Derr, 2011

A holiday gift if I remember correctly

Border Collie types

These are not my images. Here’s the source.

From the beginnings of the cinema in 1895, dogs had casual walk-on roles; but the first man to recognise their true star potential was the British pioneer Cecil Hepworth. His film Rescued by Rover (1905), a seven-minute drama of a collie who rescues his master’s baby from kidnappers, was a notable forerunner of modern film techniques. It was also a considerable commercial success for Mr. Hepworth. Featuring his wife, his baby daughter and his dog, the total production cost of the film was £7 13s 0d. Hundreds of copies were sold at £10 12s 6d each; the demand was so great that Hepworth had to remake the film twice, after the negatives simply fell to pieces with use. Rover’s success led to several sequels — Rover Drives a Car, Baby’s Playmate, A Plucky Little Girl and Dumb Comrades. The dog died in February 1910. Hepworth wrote of him:

“Even his name was only an assumed one for theatrical purposes. His real name was Blair in commemoration of his Scottish origin. He was a true friend and a great companion, but my most persistent memory of him is the way every morning in life he jumped up on a washing basket by my dressing-table and waited and longed for a dab on the nose from my shaving brush. Then, with every expression of ineffable happiness, he licked off every trace of soap and waited for more.”

— David Robinson, "Dogs as entertainers." Dogs Dogs Dogs Dogs (1968)

A soft and beloved friend. 

Source

Image of two boys in straw hats in Mareeba ca. 1903-1913. Image number: 31054-0001-0461. 31054 Harriett Brims collection, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. 

(via HOW DOGS CHANGE THE LIFE OF THE HUMAN CIVILIZATION - DOGGOZILA)

AKC Champion Mickey Do, 1933. This vintage picture is an advertisement for [American] Staffordshire Terriers, English Bull Terriers, and Scotties (Scottish Terriers) by McCabe in Walkill, New York.

While I don’t have much info on this dog or a pedigree, which if I find I will add, feel free to read on the heritage of the American Staffordshire Terrier on CanineHeritage, which also features the same vintage photo of Ch. Mickey Do:

https://canineheritage.weebly.com/american-staffordshire-terrier.html

To my malamute inclined brain I love the way the dog of the Balto statue looks, but I always think it doesn’t really look like Balto…

They make him a lot bulkier than he actually is (even though he’s kinda odd and broad for a sibe) which is why it has this malamute look to me I think. Even Balto isn’t free from being yassified in portraits.

Photos from Охотничьи Лайки (Hunting Laiki) by А. Т. Войлочников (A. T. Voylochnikov) and С. Д. Войлочникова (S. D. Voylochnikova).

Lundehund and Akita

Corn dogs are named for their traditional meat, the unicorn. As unicorns are now extinct, they can only be referred to properly as ‘Corn Dogs and not “Unicorn Dogs” as they were prior to 2009.

Possibly taking inspiration from the taxidermist Walter Potter, whose popular museum of anthropomorphic taxidermy tableaux opened in 1880, the Third Toy Dog Show in 1887 pioneered a new class: the best arrangement of taxidermied former pets, arranged in domestic settings. Winners included a group of Pugs playing cards and another enjoying a tea party; all dogs were clothed, and many were posed with cigarettes. It might have been expected that newspapers with a sporting origin like the Field would have considered this a nadir for the dog show, but the report surprisingly welcomed it as an “innovation.”

— Michael Worboys, Julie-Marie Strange & Neil Pemberton, The Invention of the Modern Dog: Breed and Blood in Victorian Britain (2018)

holy shit I wish there was a picture of this

Dog sculptures turned golden from tourists petting them throughout the years

An archivist found a long forgotten 8mm film reel in an old metal box, marked "Philippines 1942". Thinking it was lost WWII footage, he sent it in to be restored/digitized. When he got the footage back, he found puppies instead