But one could be flawed. To writer Tommy Tomlinson’s credit score, and the reader’s gratification, “Dogland” is not any sarcastic takedown of a subculture apparently ripe for belittling. Subverting expectation at each flip, it’s a wholly sympathetic portrait of people that love displaying dogs, and of dogs basically. No low cost pictures at crazy people and their equally vapid canine magnificence queens. Only poignant celebrations of a cross-species romance that has defied not solely full understanding however the march of centuries.
Despite the guide’s subtitle, the sections of the guide dedicated to explaining the world of the Westminster Dog Show are breezily temporary. These segments, which pop up all through the guide and concentrate on a champion Samoyed named Striker (full title MBIS MBISS CAN GCH AM GR CHP Vanderbilt ’N Printemp’s Lucky Strike) and his intrepid handler, Laura King, could be the dimensions of a respectful lengthy essay if pieced collectively. In the remainder of the guide, Tomlinson romps by means of all of dogdom, continuously defaulting to humorous fast takes on the millennia-long historical past of human-canine partnership, in addition to questions of biology and habits. Summarizing the evolution of wolf to canine, he writes, “We domesticated dogs, and they domesticated us”; the power of dogs to carry out duties starting from offering companionship to helping hunters to sniffing out illness, medication, bombs and the lacking makes them “the greatest multi-tool ever created.” This pliability — dogs’ apparently inborn want to bond with people, ensuing of their present reliance on us to offer for all their wants (lots of which go unfulfilled due to their house owners’ ignorance) — is cheering and heartbreaking directly.
Despite its huge material, “Dogland” nonetheless wanted padding, apparently. The throwaway high quality of the periodic entr’actes referred to as “Pee Breaks” — the writer’s rankings of Dog Haters, Cartoon Dogs, Advertising Dogs and the like — is mildly annoying in a usually severe, if pun-filled, guide. In different locations, Tomlinson’s observations are remarkably unique. He notes, for instance, that whereas the topics of Nineteenth-century photographic portraiture hardly ever smile, when a canine is within the image they’re unable to suppress indicators of pleasure.
Tomlinson seems equally unable to suppress an inclination to jokiness at instances — certainly, it’s a bit of relentless — however the mild tone helps obtain a secondary, and laudably consequential, aim: asking us to think about some powerful questions regarding dogs’ welfare. The spoonful of stylistic sugar permits the medication to go down; readers who wouldn’t go close to a treatise on animal rights could discover themselves simply led into considerate scrutiny of, say, the custom of surgical alteration to make sure purebreds adhere to their official “breed standard,” similar to ear cropping and tail docking. (Tomlinson reminds us that the tail is essential to a canine’s expressive functionality, in order that eradicating it’s “like stealing their voice.”) Similarly, an in any other case lighthearted dialogue of dogs bred for companionship, particularly the preferred breed in America, the French bulldog (or Frenchie), “the lappiest of lapdogs,” seamlessly merges right into a dialogue of the inherent cruelty of breeding brachycephalic animals: Those with cute “smooshed-in” faces, curled tails and pores and skin folds are liable to respiration difficulties, eye and spinal issues, pores and skin afflictions, the likelihood of requiring C-sections to provide beginning, and shortened life spans. Tomlinson additionally touches on the truth that present dogs are astonishingly inbred — which topics them to a number of genetic diseases: “The thing about it, of course, is that the dogs don’t get to choose,” he writes. “They just have to live with the consequences.”
Readers will probably be relieved to find that, within the guide’s lengthier narratives, Tomlinson is one thing of a genius at injecting a extra pleasurable type of disappointment. In 2022, Striker was about to look at his final Westminster earlier than retiring. His parting from King, his handler, could be simply one other facet of dog-show business, however nothing is ever simply business with regards to sharing life with a canine. They’d been collectively on the circuit for years, touring from present to point out, experiencing triumph and the occasional disappointment. After the large pageant, the impossibly fluffy canine with the pure smile would go dwell along with his house owners in Canada. And King would deal with different dogs. Yet Tomlinson movingly particulars how the mysteries of affection insinuate themselves into even essentially the most skilled of dog-human relationships — as they did to ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt, whose beloved Otis generally appeared on-screen when the anchor broadcast from home in the course of the pandemic. Viewers later witnessed the uncooked grief Van Pelt couldn’t cover when his companion died. The reader who doesn’t choke up at Tomlinson’s depiction of this episode has by no means had a canine, for which I’m sorry. But it was the story of Tomlinson’s personal canine — only a stray mutt, Fred, no purebred present materials — that basically broke me. It is unattainable to learn his recollections of Fred with out being airlifted instantly again into the surpassing sorrow of shedding one’s personal pet.
“Dogland” solely seems to be a guide about dogs and the bizarre stuff individuals do with, for and to them, even when there’s loads of that, each entertainingly and exasperatingly. In the top, it’s about one tough factor above all. It is about saying goodbye.
Melissa Holbrook Pierson is the writer of “The Secret History of Kindness: Learning From How Dogs Learn.”
Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber on the Westminster Dog Show
Avid Reader. 230 pp. $28.99
