Historical Pooches

From the average Joe to the president of the United States, people across the world have pet dogs. Get the details on the canine companions of history's most influential personalities in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Keener, joined by fellow editor Katie Lambert. Say, Candice,
Hey Katie, I have a question for you, all right,

(00:21):
who let the dogs out of the history books? It's
funny you should ask, because today we're going to talk
about historical pooches. I love, love, love, love my pooch,
and I love historical pooches too. Pooches are humanizing in
a way. You you take a historical figure like Hitler,

(00:41):
for instance, who were going to discuss who had a dog,
and when you learn the way he felt about his dog,
it somehow makes him a little bit more human, not
a lot more human, because he was a pretty terrible individual,
but um it helps aidan or understanding to know how
a person treats his or her ut so um like.

(01:01):
For instance, remember when President Obama said that after he'd
won the election, he was going to get Malia and
Sasha a puppy, and everyone was up and armed about
what kind of dog they were going to get. Everyone
had an opinion, And now the bow is there. He
makes a regular appearance in different articles in New York Times,
he's had his own presidential pet portrait taken. People just

(01:23):
love pooches, and why not. It was embarrassing almost how
excited people got about his choosing a dog. I know,
I got really excited, and I was like, well, what
kinds of hypoallergenic dogs are there? And then I felt
kind of silly, But you shouldn't. But to begin with,
to help put this in some context other than us
just gushing about how cute pooches are, We're going to
talk a bit about animal domestication, which is actually a

(01:47):
topic that has been requested before by one of you.
I don't remember who, but um specifically, canine domestication and
animal domestication in general is or can be a hot
button issue for some people. Humans used to use animals
just as food sources, but then they realized they could
be put to use to clothe them and to work

(02:08):
for them, to transport them, and even protect them. And
some animal rights advocacy groups such as Peter would argue
that you're pretting animals in captivity when you use them
and you domesticate them in this way, whereas others would
argue on behalf of domestication, saying that when a human
is caring for an animal, that animal doesn't have to
worry about where it's next meal is going to come from,

(02:30):
whether or not it's going to get too hot or
too cold, whether or not will be protected, has someone
to do that for them. And according to Jane McGrath's
wonderful article on animal domestication on the site, humans have
only domesticated fourteen animal species of about one hundred and
forty eight and the shift to domesticating animals came after
humans became domesticated, when we went from being hunter gatherers

(02:54):
to being farmers. I like that comparison. I like thinking
myself as domesticated animals. And the first domesticated dogs were
probably in Southwest Asia, and dogs are actually descendants of
the gray wolf, and DNA evidence posets that dogs became
distinct from wolves anywhere from fifteen thousand to one hundred

(03:14):
thousand years ago. It's so hard to picture to bitter
as a wolf. I know my little dare T, I
I imagine him sometimes as a wolf and he fights
me with his sharp teeth. But um, the oldest domesticated
dog fossil that we have in the fossil record is
fourteen thousand years old, and scientists like to wonder how
did dogs get to be dogs from wolves, which are

(03:37):
such wild and what we may think of as ferocious animals.
Animals change throughout the process of domestication. It seems that
domesticated animals brains become smaller actually, and they lose some
of their sensory abilities the more domesticated they are. And
some common changes, again according to James article, are floppy ears,
curly hair, and changes in size and mating habits longer

(04:00):
down the generations you go. So there's a bit of
behavioral change as well as biology taking place. And as
far as behavioral changes go, experts suspect that early humans
would leave piles of food scraps around and wolves might
come route around in them and just discovered that humans

(04:20):
were actually kind of nice because they would give them food,
or else humans choken wolf pops and kept them as
paths or kept them around, so it could have made
them a little bit more docile and their relationship with
humans could have evolved like that, or natural selection could
have taken place to create the first kind of dog.
And what's so interesting about wolves is that you know,

(04:44):
they have packed behavior, they decide who was the leader
of their pack, and they have this hardwired sense of
social hierarchy in place. So when humans came along and
became their new masters, it was just natural for the
wolf to differ to the human and there you go.
The dog eventually develop ups. It wasn't until the nineteenth
century that we saw a bunch of new dog breeds actually,

(05:05):
and dog shows started to come into vogue, and people
would make their own breeds of dogs to do specific purposes,
whether that was hunting or protecting or keeping them company.
And we know that today they are designer dog breeds
for people, mixed breeds with different breeds, and we get
things like cockapoos and labradoodles and and teeny teeny tiny

(05:25):
versions with dogs. It's like things from Dr SEUs. I
just I don't quite understand it. Um. But but pats
have a long and ancient history. The Egyptians actually kept
dogs as pets, and they really live the high life
with attendance and vigeweled collars, and in some instances, dogs
were even mummified and entombed with their masters. And I've

(05:48):
always been fascinated by the etymology of pet first, because
I'm ridiculous and I get fascinated by things like that.
But I'd always suspected that the word pet and the
concept of pet of all from an object or an animal,
that you actually pat verb, and that's not actually true.
I was way off base. Whoa Candice Woah? The Online

(06:08):
Animology Dictionary says that pat is from uh Scotland and
North England, and in fifteen o eight it was used
to mean an indulged child, in fifteen thirty nine it
was used to refer to an animal kept as a favorite,
and not until sixteen twenty nine was it used as
a verb that meant to treat as a pet, and

(06:29):
not until eighteen eighteen was it a verb meant to stroke.
So there you go. Anything you ever wanted to know
about the word pet. So without further ado, now that
we know how dogs came to be and what a
pet actually is, let's get into the historical pooches, and
to start off with someone who seriously needs some humanizing,
we'll talk about Adolf Hitler's German shepherd a Blondie, and

(06:53):
in the summer of nineteen forty three, pretty much the
only time he left his bunker was to walk Blondie
and his girlfriend Eva Braun didn't like her at all.
And the story about Blondie is that Hitler was thinking
about committing suicide with cyanide capsules and he wanted to

(07:13):
test them out to make sure they hadn't been contaminated
by other sources that they still worked, that they were
what they said they were, because at this point he
was a bit paranoid that people were trying to kill him, understandably,
so they gave the cyanide capsules to Blondie, who died immediately.
Although Candice, I think you were saying that might not
actually be the case. I've read other sources, conflicting sources

(07:35):
that explained that Hitler wanted a humane death for his dog,
and so he had her put down because he was
afraid that if he turned her loose, he didn't know
what the people in Berlin would do to her in
retaliation against him. Well, and after Blondie died either way,
they took Blondie's puppies and shot all of them and
then also killed ava bronze dogs. And this was at

(07:59):
the very end of Hitler's life period. In April nineteen five,
that's when he learned that MUSLINI was killed, and that
night he married his girlfriend, dictated his will, they said
their goodbyes, and then he shot himself and Ava took
the cyanide and their dog was cremated actually and with them.
Another historical Preach story that is a little bit warmer

(08:20):
and fuzzier is one that came as a request from
a listener who wanted to hear us talk about Grayfriars Bobby.
And when I read the story of Grayfriars Bobby, uh,
it transported me back in time to early spring two
thousand seven. Uh. In the very first stages of the
Stuff You Should Know podcast, Um, when I was doing

(08:41):
it with Chris Poulette and Josh Clark ages Ago, I'm
telling you, and we talked about this. Akita named her
Chico and basically the story behind her cheeker was that
her master died and she waited very patiently for him
every day the subways, so she expected him to come back.
Very very sad stuff. And the Bobby story is very
similar too. In eighteen fifty eight, John Gray died and

(09:04):
was buried in Grayfriars Churchyard in Scotland, and he had
a little sky terrier named Bobby. And even though John
Gray didn't have a very elaborate burial plot, and some
people would say it was vastly distinguishable from the rest
of the landscape surrounding it, Bobby always knew where his
master was, and he waited there and never left except

(09:24):
for food. And people would actually come and watch and
observe this dog holding vigil by his master's grave. Even
a cold hearted robot like me has to cheer up
a little bit that one. For fourteen years, grayfriars, Bobby
waited there, and today there are little monuments to him,
and in his loyalty tears master. And speaking of monuments,

(09:45):
there's actually a statue of FDR's little black Scottie Falla
near the FDR memorial and the first presidential pet biography
was actually written about Falla. The dog was much beloved
by the nation and got FDR in trouble once because
Falla accompanied him on a trip to the Aleutian Islands,
and the rumor spread around in the media was that

(10:07):
Falla was left and the President sent back a destroyer
ship to go. Can't Falla thereby wasting millions of taxpair dollars,
And the President actually answered in a speech which is
known as the fall of speech, when he was talking
to the Teamsters union and saying that he was perfectly
fine with being criticized, but you leave his dog out

(10:28):
of it. And you know, if you've never been to
the FDR Memorial in Washington, you should go. But don't
make the mistake I did, which was walking through it backward.
I accidentally started at the end, started at the beginning,
I know, because I am brilliant, So I started at
the end, and it's very haunting and poignant scenes of

(10:48):
what life would have been like in the Great Depression.
And but then when you get to the beginning, there's
a very nice statue of FDR with Falla. So if
you want to be uh depressed and then cheered up,
go from the end of the beginning. But if you
want the reverse experience, actually go the way the artists
intended for you to follow the path. So there you
have it. And Falla actually had a pretty nice life.

(11:10):
He had his own bone delivered every day on the
President's breakfast tray, and the staff was actually told not
to feed him anymore because he was so cute. Everyone
kept giving him stuff and he got ill. Oh no,
another dog they got ill is George Herbert, lord Carnavon's dog,
and Lord carnavan actually financed Howard Carter's excavation of King

(11:33):
Tut's tomb, and while he was with the excavation party,
he was bitten by a mosquito and later became very
ill and died well. And then his dog, Susie, who
was a Fox terrier, died too, and according to eyewitness reports,
Susie supposedly let out a very loud and plaintive how

(11:55):
and then just dropped dead. And the media at the time,
and Arthur Conan Doyle, who you know is famous for
his Sherlock Holmes stories, popularized the idea of the Mommy's
curse and how it had affected not only Lord Carnivan
but also his dog. So as Green editor Sarah Dowdy,
who wrote that article said, who knew the Mummy's curse

(12:16):
extends to dogs? And speaking of curses, will go to
the Kennedy curse because jfk Jr. Had a little dog
named Pashinka who was given to him by Khrushchev. And
there were some very cute pictures of of little jfk Jr.
Holding the little dog and This might be my favorite
fact I came across doing this research from swam Torn's dog.

(12:37):
Baltique actually eight off porcelain, drank only mineral water, and
had his own chauffeur, according to this particular website, and
in his will, Metauran asked that Baltique walk in his
funeral procession a very Helmsley like if only he left
at gobs and gobs of money, but not all presidential

(12:58):
pouchas like follow for instance, how it quite so easy?
Little Phido Lincoln was actually stabbed by a drunk man,
which is tragic. And then there was a media frenzy
around Checkers Nixon, and Nixon was accused of taking cash
from private donors and basically just having this giant stock

(13:18):
of money that he could use for his own personal purposes.
So on September twenty three, n two, he got on
TV to defend himself and went into great detail about
what all of his money was used for, and what
kind of contributions he took and what expenses he had,
and made sure to put in a plug for his

(13:40):
sweet dog Checkers that his daughter so loved, and the
public completely aided up. Some people say he was one
of the first to use the media to manipulate his
message in such a helpful way, although, of course, with
his debate and with Kennedy in nineteen sixty, Kennedy won
that one. You see what I mean about about preaches
humanizing historical years exactly. And so we think that all

(14:02):
of you out there who have pooches, um, well you
should email us and tell us all about your adorable pooches,
because we love stuff like that, but also tell us
who your favorite historical pooches. And actually, speaking of pooches
making history and having a hold over people, I have
to say that over the past almost year and a
half that I've been doing this podcast, it has been

(14:24):
such a blast. But I have a sweet little Jack
Russell named Jupiter at home, and I've been so busy,
you know, regaling all of you with tales of history
that I've sadly been missing his formative years. So without
further ado, I bid you all adio, and I leave
the podcast in Katie's very capable hands, and joining us

(14:45):
will be one of our wonderful fellow editors, Sarah Dowity.
So thank you all for listening and for your kind
emails and ideas Over the past year, and if you
want more information about historical pouches and other historical figures,
be sure to visit the website at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

(15:08):
visit how stuff works dot com let us know what
you think, Send an email to podcast at how stuff
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