Milestones: From Frankenstein to Facebook

Click here to read the complete article
76 – April, 2022

By Wayne Cavanaugh

Three years before the great terrier man George Ward passed away in 2004, I was interviewing him for Animal Planet’s broadcast of the Cleveland shows. I asked him what the biggest change was from when he first started in dogs. He didn’t miss a beat, a classic one-word George reply: “Electricity!”

He wasn’t kidding. George was born in 1917 in Canada. As a teenager, he came to the states to work in an Airedale kennel. Only half of American homes had electricity in 1925. By 1960, virtually all American homes had electricity. Can you imagine a kennel or a dog show without electric clippers, force dryers, and generators? George was spot on.

The early years of electricity were full of mystery and mayhem. Electricity even gave poor Frankenstein a bad rap. In her 1818 novel, Mary Shelly created a science experiment named Frankenstein as a wise and discerning man, not a monster. But in the 1931 movie with Boris Karloff, they decided to stick a couple of electrodes in his neck and Franky became unwise and scary with the flick of a switch.

In our sport, electricity was anything but a monster. As was true in general life, it supercharged our sport with an extraordinary list of wonderful improvements. There is no doubt that while it may seem like ancient history, electricity became a major early milestone of change in our sport.

Click here to read the complete article
76 – April, 2022

Short URL: http://caninechronicle.com/?p=227718

Posted by AnthonyA on Apr 8 2022. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.