Walk, eat, sleep, repeat. The life of a pampered pooch is relevant to only a fraction of the estimated one billion dogs currently living as pets, working animals, strays and feral dogs. The majority are living ‘a dog’s life’. This familiar expression, originating in the sixteenth century, does not refer to the easy existence of pets, but rather to the harsh treatment and miserable existence of those animals who work ceaselessly in the service of their owners, often left to scavenge for themselves and abandoned when they are no longer of service.
The lives of fighting dogs must surely be among the most difficult. For centuries before the outlawing of blood sports in 1835, brutal staged fights between animals were a common form of entertainment in Britain. Dog fighting was popular, attracting large crowds keen to watch the vicious battles and wager on the outcomes. An etching by Theodore Lane shows a celebrated event, the caged fight between Wallace the lion and three pairs of specially bred and trained fighting dogs on a Saturday afternoon in July 1825.1 Wallace, the infamous star attraction of Wombwell’s Menagerie, was the first lion born in captivity in Georgian England and was renowned for his aggressive attacks on other animals and people who had the misfortune to get too close. Due to his popularity with the public, Wallace’s image was captured by a number of painters, engravers and sculptors. His name became synonymous with lions in circuses, shows and zoos across the British Empire. When Wallace died in 1838 his hide was preserved and stuffed, and he can still be seen today at the Walden Museum in Essex. Sent to attack an enraged lion, all six dogs met a terrible fate that day.
Beyond fighting, the working relationship between humans and dogs is underpinned by characteristic canine behaviours. Breeds such as the bloodhound are known for their formidable tracking skills. Depicted in Briton Rivière’s grand narrative painting Deer stealers pursued by sleuth hounds, a pack of bloodhounds doggedly pursue a group of deer poachers. The thieves may well be starving, but the central subject of the painting and object of our sympathy is a wounded dog, shot by a poacher’s arrow in the service of its master.
Similarly, the death of the sled dogs on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914–17 trans-Antarctic expedition was the source of much heartache for the crew onboard the ship Endurance. Wrecked on the ice, their survival was dependent on conserving resources and, as Shackleton wrote, this had tragic consequences for the much-loved dogs:
Owing to this shortage of food and the fact that we needed all that we could get for ourselves, I had to order all the dogs except two teams be shot. It was the worst job that we had throughout the expedition, and we felt their loss keenly.2 Ernest Shackleton, South! The story of Shackleton’s last expedition 1914–1917, Macmillan, London, 1920, p. 109.
Expedition photographer Frank Hurley’s last images of the dogs show them patiently waiting, obedient to the end.
Notes
Wallace, the infamous star attraction of Wombwell’s Menagerie, was the first lion born in captivity in Georgian England and was renowned for his aggressive attacks on other animals and people who had the misfortune to get too close. Due to his popularity with the public, Wallace’s image was captured by a number of painters, engravers and sculptors. His name became synonymous with lions in circuses, shows and zoos across the British Empire. When Wallace died in 1838 his hide was preserved and stuffed, and he can still be seen today at the Walden Museum in Essex.
Ernest Shackleton, South! The story of Shackleton’s last expedition 1914–1917, Macmillan, London, 1920, p. 109.