Women and Dogs

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180 – April, 2023

By Sarah Montague

My grandmother bred several generations of Standard Poodles in a townhouse near Washington Square Park. They had coats of many colors, and temperaments to match, and were named for Italian opera singers, Middle Eastern potentates, and writers. (She also had a very entertaining Collie-derived mixed breed. She was called “Genevieve” for the 1953 film about the Brighton Old Car Race.)

All of which is to say, I have always thought of women and dogs as being part of the same universe. And as March is ‘Women’s History Month’, I thought I would touch on some of these relationships.

As in much canine history, owning dogs was originally a mark of privilege. Hieroglyphs and tomb paintings place hounds in the company of Queen Hatshepsut, and Cleopatra VII (the model for the two Shakespeare plays). These would have evolved into one or more of the native Egyptian breeds of today, while their owners became the stuff of legend and film.

There is a delicious–and faintly ridiculous–painting by Tiberio Di Tio (1573-1627) entitled Dogs Belonging to the Medici Family (think Catherine), showing no fewer than ten dogs–most are beribboned spaniels but there are a couple of terrier-like specimens and a working dog of some kind judging from the business-like head. My (not entirely uneducated) guess is that the picture was a decorative fabrication; there is a rather cruelly rendered human figure off to the right–as if in contrast to the elegance and good breeding of the animals.

Click here to read the complete article
180 – April, 2023

 

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