Breed Of Dog Quotes

Animal lovers are a special breed of humans, generous of spirit, full of empathy, perhaps a little prone to sentimentality, and with hearts as big as a cloudless sky

He's getting old. I don't count the years. I don't multiply by seven. They bred dogs for everything else, even diving for fish, why didn't they breed them to live longer, to live as long as a man?

I felt the need to clarify we were there for the self defense class, in case he also taught about dog breeding or riding the high seas.

There is no such thing as a problem breed. However, there is no shortage of 'problem owners'....

Having actually read the Voltaire in question, I can confirm the quote is, as different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds,” Nicholas said coldly. “Interesting, though, that in the end we're all just dogs.

Men are generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children.

He had the appeal of a very young dog of a very large breed -- a kind of amiable absurdity.

Papa's in a bad way, Locke. I wanted to see you before you saw him - he has some...things he wishes to discuss with you. I want you to know that whatever he asks, I don't want you...for my sake...well, please, just agree. Please him, do you understand?" "No garrista who loves life has ever tried to do otherwise. You think I'm inclined to walk in on a day like today and deliberately twist his breeches? If your father says 'bark like a dog' I say 'What breed, Your Honour?

Have you ever noticed that, though we breed, raise, and kill ten billion animals per year, most of us never see even a single part of the process of meat production?

People are all exactly alike. There's no such thing as a race and barely such a thing as an ethnic group. If we were dogs, we'd be the same breed. George Bush and an Australian Aborigine have fewer differences than a Lhasa apso and a toy fox terrier. A Japanese raised in Riyadh would be an Arab. A Zulu raised in New Rochelle would be an orthodontist. People are all the same, though their circumstances differ terribly.

If your father says 'Bark like a dog,' I say 'What breed, Your Honor?

Wolf, not dog. You were bitten by a Lycan, not Lassie.

Put another way, I love all of you dog lovers, but I have to spoil your fun a little with a fundamental truth. There is, in an important evolutionary sense, no such thing as a specific breed of dog. If a Great Dane has sex with a dachshund, you get a dog. If a Standard Poodle has sex with a Jack Russell terrier, you get a dog. If a mutt has sex with a so-called purebred, you get a dog.

. . .but he'd seen elite warriors go down in flames enough times to struggle with the sovereignty of God yet yield to it

They bred dogs for everything else, even diving for fish, why didn’t they breed them to live longer, to live as long as a man?

I often think about dogs when I think about work and retirement. There are many breeds of dog that just need to be working, and useful, or have a job of some kind, in order to be happy. Otherwise they are neurotically barking, scratching, or tearing up the sofa. A working dog needs to work. And I am a working dog.

Dude--she's your wife." He pointed to the locker where the Bible lay concealed. "God first, family second, country third.

Not all dogs are perfect dogs, but all dogs are inherently good. Like people, we are affected by environment and circumstance. Some breeds get a bad rap because sometimes humans breed them to be a certain way, like overly macho or protective. In our life on earth we are dependent on humans for everything, including our breeding. We can be bred for aggression or we can be bred for peace.

Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat

If trained animal professionals with years of dog-handling experience aren’t good at visually identifying breeds, then what does that say about the rest of us?

So a dog's value came from the training AND the breeding. And by breeding, Edgar supposed he meant both the bloodlines - the particular dogs in their ancestry - and all the information in the file cabinets. Because the files, with their photographs, measurements, notes, charts, cross-references, and scores, told the STORY of the dog - what a MEANT as his father put it.

Another of the great civilizations, the Aztecs, raised a breed of hairless chihuahuas especially for eating. When the Conquistadors arrived and found dog on the menu, they were of the same opinion as Mademoiselle, that this was evidence of the worst form of barbarism. They, the Spaniards, used dogs as befits civilized and Christian men - to hunt down fugitive Indians and tear them to pieces.

Golden eagles don`t mate with bald eagles, deer don`t mate with antelope, gray wolves don`t mate with red wolves. Just look at domesticated animals, at mongrel dogs, and mixed breed horses, and you`ll know the Great Mystery didn`t intend them to be that way. We weakened the species and introduced disease by mixing what should be kept seperate. Among humans, intermarriage weakens the respect people have for themselves and for their traditions. It undermines clarity of spirit and mind.

breeds of dogs were developed and raised for food in Aztec Mexico, Polynesia, and ancient China.

Racism breeds racism in reverse.

I made a sudden decision. "and my dog has followed me from town and cought up with us here. I left him with friends, but he must have chewed his rope. here, boy, come to heel." I'll chew your heel off for you, Nighteyes offerd savagely, but he came, following me out into the cleared yard. "Damn big dog," Nick observed. He leaned forward. "looks more than half a wolf to me." "Some in Farrow have told me that. It's a buck breed. We use them for harding sheep." You will pay for this. I promise you. In answer I leaned down to pat his shoulder and then scratch his ears. Wag your tail, Nighteyes. "He's a loyal old dog. I should have known he wouldn't be left behind." The things i endure for you. He wagged his tail. Once.

Yes there were two great groups of dogs wrangling for the bitching-goddess: the group of the flatterers, those who offered her amusement, stories, films, plays: and the other, much less showy, much more savage breed, those who gave her meat, the real substance of money. The well-groomed showy dogs of amusement wrangled and snarled among themselves for the favors of the bitch-goddess. But it was nothing to the silent fight-to-the-death that went on among the indispensables, the bone-bringers.

The symbolic evidence of women’s invisibility in the human race is most clear perhaps in her suppression, her camouflage, her negation even in language. Women are subsumed, excised, erased by male pronouns, by male terminology, by male prayers about brotherhood and brethren, even and always by exclusively male images of God. The tradition that will call God spirit, rock, key door, wind, and bird will never ever call God mother. So much for the creative womb of God; so much for “I am who am.” So much for “Let us make human beings in our own image, male and female, let us make them.” What kind of spirituality is that? To take the position that using two pronouns for the human race is not important in a culture that has thirty words for car, multiple words for flowers, and dozens of words for dog breeds is to say that women are not important.

You think I’m inclined to walk in on a day like today and deliberately twist his breeches? If your father says ‘bark like a dog,’ I say ‘What breed, Your Honor?’ 

A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can’t get it by breeding for it, and you can’t buy it with money. It just happens along.

The dog show emphasizes bloodline, appearance, and comportment, but money and breeding are never far from anyone's mind.

Help me be still, God. Not literally, of course, but in heart and mind, in attitude.

Bloody global warming. Funny breed us Brits. We moan when it rains cats and dogs and complain when it’s too hot. Let the protestors emigrate to bleeding Siberia. That’s what I say, eh?

The Rakshasa," said Percy pedantically, "are a different breed altogether from our vampires. Much in the same way that poodles and dachshunds are different breeds of dog. Rakshasas are reviled in India. Their position as tax collectors is an attempts by the crown to integrate them in a more progressive and mundane manner." Rue said, "Oh, how logical. Because we all know ordaining someone as a tax collector is the surest way to get them accepted by society.

Parenthood is not some special currency,” Iris said. “Being a parent is not a status thing.” “Surely they’re superior in one way? They’ve done things we’ve been unable to do.” “What, procreation? The turkeys do it. All those dogs and cats do it. Your bees, too. Fuck and breed.

In the end, what i have come to believe about God is simple. It's like this - I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, "What kind of dog is that?" I would always give the same answer: "She's a brown dog." Similarly, when the question is raised, "What kind of God do you believe in?" my answer is easy: "I believe in a magnificent God.

The Prologue to TERRITORY LOST "Of cats' first disobedience, and the height Of that forbidden tree whose doom'd ascent Brought man into the world to help us down And made us subject to his moods and whims, For though we may have knock'd an apple loose As we were carried safely to the ground, We never said to eat th'accursed thing, But yet with him were exiled from our place With loss of hosts of sweet celestial mice And toothsome baby birds of paradise, And so were sent to stray across the earth And suffer dogs, until some greater Cat Restore us, and regain the blissful yard, Sing, heavenly Mews, that on the ancient banks Of Egypt's sacred river didst inspire That pharaoh who first taught the sons of men To worship members of our feline breed: Instruct me in th'unfolding of my tale; Make fast my grasp upon my theme's dark threads That undistracted save by naps and snacks I may o'ercome our native reticence And justify the ways of cats to men.

By performing a simple Google search, a website review, a visit to their LinkedIn profile, or a media release search on the person you are about to meet, you can find out where they’ve been, what they care about, and where they’re going. Whether you learn an interesting fact about a hobby they enjoy, the breed of their dog, or something you both have in common, it will show that you took the time to research and that you care about them as a person.

Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraced his steps to the camp they had left. The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot rang out. The man came back hurriedly. The whips snapped, the bells tinkled merrily, the sleds churned along the trail; but Buck knew, and every dog knew, what had taken place behind the belt of river trees.

You have quite a way with animals.” “They’re my business,” she said, as if she needed to explain her delight. “You’re good at it. That’s obvious.” “I like helping animals. It makes me feel . . . useful, I guess.” “Maybe you could show me what you do sometime.” Tess cocked her head at him. “Do you have a pet?” Dante should have said no, but he was still picturing her with those two ridiculous furballs and wishing that he could bring her some of that same joy. “I keep a dog. Like those.” “You do? What’s its name?” Dante cleared his throat, mentally casting about for what he might call a useless creature that depended on him for survival. “Harvard,” he drawled, his lips curving with private humor. “I call it Harvard.” “Well, I’d love to meet him sometime, Dante.” A chilly breeze kicked up, and Tess shivered, rubbing her arms. “It’s getting kind of late. I should probably think about heading home.” “Yeah, sure.” Dante nodded, kicking himself for making up a pet, for God’s sake, just because it might win him some favor with Tess.

Some of those reported legitimate pit bull attacks—the price of so many unsocialized, abused, and aggressively trained dogs popping up around the country—but many were the result of pit bull hysteria, in which almost any incident involving a dog was falsely reported as a pit bull attack. The breed, which had existed in some form for hundreds of years, didn’t suddenly lose control. The dogs simply fell into the hands of many more people who had no interest in control.

In front of the group was a legless man on a small wheeled trolley, who was singing at the top of his voice and banging two saucepans together. His name was Arnold Sideways. Pushing him along was Coffin Henry, whose croaking progress through an entirely different song was punctuated by bouts of off-the-beat coughing. He was accompanied by a perfectly ordinary-looking manin torn, dirty and yet expensive looking clothing, whose pleasant tenor voice was drowned out by the quaking of a duck on his head. He answered to the name of Duck Man, although he never seemed to understand why, or why he was always surrounded by people who seemed to see ducks where no ducks could be. And finally, being towed along by a small grey dog on a string, was Foul Ole Ron, generally regarded in Ankh-Morpork as the deranged beggars' deranged beggar. He was probably incapable of singing, but at least he was attempting to swear in time to the beat, or beats. The wassailers stopped and watched them in horror. People have always had the urge to sing and clang things at the dark stub of the year, when all sorts of psychic nastiness has taken advantage of the long grey days and the deep shadows to lurk and breed. Lately people had taken to singing harmoniously, which rather lost the affect. Those who really understood just clanged something and shouted. The beggars were not in fact this well versed in folkloric practice. They were just making a din in the well-founded hope that people would give them money to stop. It was just possible to make out consensus song in there somewhere. "Hogswatch is coming, The pig is getting fat, Please put a dollar in the old man's hat If you ain't got a dollar a penny will do-" "And if you ain't got a penny," Foul Ole Ron yodeled, solo, 'Then- fghfgh yffg mfmfmf..." The Duck man had, with great Presence of mind, clamped a hand over Ron's mouth.

The men digging in on both sides of me cursed the stench and the mud. I began moving the heavy, sticky clay mud with my entrenching shovel to shape out the extent of the foxhole before digging deeper. Each shovelful had to be knocked off the spade, because it stuck like glue. I was thoroughly exhausted and thought my strength wouldn’t last from one sticky shovelful to the next. Kneeling on the mud, I had dug the hole no more than six or eight inches deep when the odor of rotting flesh got worse. There was nothing to do but continue to dig, so I closed up my mouth and inhaled with short shallow breaths. Another spadeful of soil out of the hole released a mass of wriggling maggots that came welling up as though those beneath were pushing them out. I cursed and told the NCO as he came by what a mess I was digging into. ‘You heard him, he said put the holes five yards apart.’ In disgust, I drove the spade into the soil, scooped out the insects, and threw them down the front of the ridge. The next stroke of the spade unearthed buttons and scraps of cloth from a Japanese army jacket in the mud—and another mass of maggots. I kept on doggedly. With the next thrust, metal hit the breastbone of a rotting Japanese corpse. I gazed down in horror and disbelief as the metal scraped a clean track through the mud along the dirty whitish bone and cartilage with ribs attached. The shoved skidded into the rotting abdomen with a squishing sound. The odor nearly overwhelmed me as I rocked back on my heels. I began choking and gagging as I yelled in desperation, ‘I can’t dig in here! There’s a dead Nip here!’ The NCO came over, looked down at my problem and at me, and growled, ‘You heard him; he said put the holes five yards apart.

Seen on her own, the woman was not so remarkable. Tall, angular, aquiline features, with the close-cropped hair which was fashionably called an Eton crop, he seemed to remember, in his mother's day, and about her person the stamp of that particular generation. She would be in her middle sixties, he supposed, the masculine shirt with collar and tie, sports jacket, grey tweed skirt coming to mid-calf. Grey stockings and laced black shoes. He had seen the type on golf courses and at dog shows - invariably showing not sporting breeds but pugs - and if you came across them at a party in somebody's house they were quicker on the draw with a cigarette lighter than he was himself, a mere male, with pocket matches. The general belief that they kept house with a more feminine, fluffy companion was not always true. Frequently they boasted, and adored, a golfing husband. ("Don't Look Now")

She's a pit bull," I told them, making sure to say it as matterof-factly as I could. But no matter how I said the words, the parents always took the children by the hand and led them away. People hear about pit bulls, but often they have no idea what they really are-that they used to be considered nanny dogs, trusted members of the family. Or that even when they do have issues, it's not with people but with other dogs. The breed may attract a higher number of dubious owners, but the breed itself should be judged on its own.

In nearly every municipality where breed-specific legislation (BSL) has been adopted, it has failed to prevent serious dog bite injuries and hospitalizations. Veterinarians, animal behaviorists, and public health experts, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are virtually unanimous in their denunciation of BSL on the grounds that it is both cruel and ineffective.

A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his mates, and in company with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over the weary trail to Dawson. It was no light running now, nor record time, but heavy toil each day, with a heavy load behind; for this was the mail train,

Fear is one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited. There is nothing new or recent about fear—it is doubtless as old as the life of man on the planet. Fears are of many kinds—fear of objects, fear of people, fear of the future, fear of nature, fear of the unknown, fear of old age, fear of disease, and fear of life itself. Then there is fear which has to do with aspects of experience and detailed states of mind. Our homes, institutions, prisons, churches, are crowded with people who are hounded by day and harrowed by night because of some fear that lurks ready to spring into action as soon as one is alone, or as soon as the lights go out, or as soon as one’s social defenses are temporarily removed. The ever-present fear that besets the vast poor, the economically and socially insecure, is a fear of still a different breed. It is a climate closing in; it is like the fog in San Francisco or in London. It is nowhere in particular yet everywhere. It is a mood which one carries around with himself, distilled from the acrid conflict with which his days are surrounded. It has its roots deep in the heart of the relations between the weak and the strong, between the controllers of environment and those who are controlled by it. When the basis of such fear is analyzed, it is clear that it arises out of the sense of isolation and helplessness in the face of the varied dimensions of violence to which the underprivileged are exposed. Violence, precipitate and stark, is the sire of the fear of such people. It is spawned by the perpetual threat of violence everywhere. Of course, physical violence is the most obvious cause. But here, it is important to point out, a particular kind of physical violence or its counterpart is evidenced; it is violence that is devoid of the element of contest. It is what is feared by the rabbit that cannot ultimately escape the hounds.

The average American, one judge ruled, cannot reasonably be expected to visually distinguish between various varieties of persons of Asian origin. As if they were types of apples, or breeds of dogs; as if those persons of Asian origin did not count as average Americans themselves.

None of the ginkgo's aesthetic qualities are all that different from those of other trees. I could just as easily wax poetic about the beauty of beech trees, or the majesty of ancient sugar pines. But I think that ginkgos are just unusual enough for the occasional human to take notice of them. It's not that any particular tree or breed of dog or varietal or rose is objectively superior to its peers, they just happen to be the creatures that momentarily capture our flickering attention. As soon as humans take open-hearted notice of anything in the natural world, we find reason to love it.

through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing remained to Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair of Francois, he decided, and the half-breed began his rise in Buck's estimation. The other dog made no advances, nor received any; also, he did not attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy,

Polynesians and Aztecs developed dog breeds specifically raised for food.

Roughly 75 percent of the more than four hundred dog breeds we recognize today are whimsical confections whipped up in the late nineteenth century.

This was the neighborhood of the cheap addicts, whisky-heads, stumblebums, the flotsam of Harlem; the end of the line for the whores, the hard squeeze for the poor honest laborers and a breeding ground for crime. Blank-eyed whores stood on the street corners swapping obscenities with twitching junkies. Muggers and thieves slouched in dark doorways waiting for someone to rob; but there wasn't anyone but each other. Children ran down the street, the dirty street littered with rotting vegetables, uncollected garbage, battered garbage cans, broken glass, dog offal — always running, ducking and dodging. God help them if they got caught. Listless mothers stood in the dark entrances of tenements and swapped talk about their men, their jobs, their poverty, their hunger, their debts, their Gods, their religions, their preachers, their children, their aches and pains, their bad luck with the numbers and the evilness of white people. Workingmen staggered down the sidewalks filled with aimless resentment, muttering curses, hating to go to their hotbox hovels but having nowhere else to go.

She hated him, this man, and these men: the ones who picked her up without expression and used her without emotion. The ones who picked her up with no more regard than they had for picking lint off the collars of their well-pressed suits. She preferred the sweaty nervousness of young virgins or the eager speediness of excited old vets with their knobby fingers and waxy breath to these cold, hard men. These were the ones who called her squaw. Who called her half-breed, the ones who would just as soon slap her than bother to put on the condom she always handed them. She often wondered why they didn’t just keep the $80 it cost to be with her and drive their comfortable, bucket-seated SUVs home to the suburbs. They could kiss their wives hello and then slip into very hot showers to jerk off for free. Their peckish wives could spend the money they saved spending an afternoon getting the silk wraps and pedicures that would goad them into putting out anyways. To these men she had no name and no face. She was a hole. Consequently, she held no regard for these bastards. She gave them the calculated respect accorded to dangerous dogs.

In fact it was altogether an odd dog, of uncertain breed, or breeds. It was large and black, but its hair was tufty, its body scrawny and clumsy, and its manner edgy, anxious, verging on the completely neurotic. Whenever it came to a halt for a moment or so, the business of starting up again often seemed to cause it trouble, as if it had difficulty in remembering where it had left each of its legs.

Culturally, though not theologically, I’m a Christian. I was born a Protestant of the white Anglo-Saxon persuasion. And while I do love that great teacher of peace who was called Jesus, and while I do reserve the right to ask myself in certain trying situations what indeed He would do, I can’t swallow that one fixed rule of Christianity insisting that Christ is the only path to God. Strictly speaking, then, I cannot call myself a Christian. Most of the Christians I know accept my feelings on this with grace and open-mindedness. Then again, most of the Christians I know don’t speak very strictly. To those who do speak (and think) strictly, all I can do here is offer my regrets for any hurt feelings and now excuse myself from their business. “Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed—much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. I respond with gratitude to anyone who has ever voyaged to the center of that heart, and who has then returned to the world with a report for the rest of us that God is an experience of supreme love. In every religious tradition on earth, there have always been mystical saints and transcendents who report exactly this experience. Unfortunately many of them have ended up arrested and killed. Still, I think very highly of them. “In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. It’s like this—I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, “What kind of dog is that?” I would always give the same answer: “She’s a brown dog.” Similarly, when the question is raised, “What kind of God do you believe in?” my answer is easy: “I believe in a magnificent God

North Korea is a famine state. In the fields, you can see people picking up loose grains of rice and kernels of corn, gleaning every scrap. They look pinched and exhausted. In the few, dingy restaurants in the city, and even in the few modern hotels, you can read the Pyongyang Times through the soup, or the tea, or the coffee. Morsels of inexplicable fat or gristle are served as 'duck.' One evening I gave in and tried a bowl of dog stew, which at least tasted hearty and spicy—they wouldn't tell me the breed—but then found my appetite crucially diminished by the realization that I hadn't seen a domestic animal, not even the merest cat, in the whole time I was there.

Good,’ said Mr Carton. ‘Why children, a loathsome breed who should be kept under hatches or in monasteries till they have acquired some rudiments of manners and consideration for others, should be encouraged to think themselves of importance now, I do not know. The English as a race have always been sentimental about dogs, and draught horses in Italy where most of them have never been, but this wave of sentiment about children is a new and revolting outburst.

What was once an anonymous medium where anyone could be anyone—where, in the words of the famous New Yorker cartoon, nobody knows you’re a dog—is now a tool for soliciting and analyzing our personal data. According to one Wall Street Journal study, the top fifty Internet sites, from CNN to Yahoo to MSN, install an average of 64 data-laden cookies and personal tracking beacons each. Search for a word like “depression” on Dictionary.com, and the site installs up to 223 tracking cookies and beacons on your computer so that other Web sites can target you with antidepressants. Share an article about cooking on ABC News, and you may be chased around the Web by ads for Teflon-coated pots. Open—even for an instant—a page listing signs that your spouse may be cheating and prepare to be haunted with DNA paternity-test ads. The new Internet doesn’t just know you’re a dog; it knows your breed and wants to sell you a bowl of premium kibble.

Once the breed label on my dog’s license had the potential to change the material circumstances of my life, including where I could and could not live, I began to notice how breed-focused modern American culture is. “When a cocker spaniel bites,” the journalist Tom Junod once wrote in Esquire, “it does so as a member of its species; it is never anything but a dog. When a pit bull bites, it does so as a member of its breed. A pit bull is never anything but a pit bull.

Listen, and you hear creation. It is in the sound of passing sirens; distant music; church bells; cell phones; lawn mowers and snow blowers; basketballs and bicycles; waves on breakers; hammers and saws; the creak and crackle of melting ice cubes; even the bark of a dog, a wolf changed by millennia of selective breeding by humans; or the purr of a cat, the descendant of one of just five African wildcats that humans have been selectively breeding for ten thousand years.

More than that, however, the rigid lens of breed seems to present the dog as a series of switches and levers waiting to be manipulated for our own use, rather than as a sentient creature with an emotional life and the ability to make choices.

In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. It’s like this—I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, “What kind of dog is that?” I would always give the same answer: “She’s a brown dog.” Similarly, when the question is raised, “What kind of God do you believe in?” my answer is easy: “I believe in a magnificent God.

In the end, neither fretting nor bravado could distract him any longer from the thought that he was fatherless. He and his father had in their jocular, gingerly fashion loved each other, but now that his father was dead, Joe felt only regret. It was not just the usual regret over things left unsaid, thanks unexpressed and apologies withheld. Joe did not yet regret the lost future opportunities for expatiation on favorite shared subjects, such as film directors (they revered Buster Keaton) or breeds of dogs.

Shelters that have abandoned using breed labels for dogs from unknown backgrounds, including Orange County Animal Services in Florida and Fairfax County Animal Shelter in Virginia, have seen the number of dog adoptions at their facilities rise significantly.

In the afterglow of the Big Bang, humans spread in waves across the universe, sprawling and brawling and breeding and dying and evolving. There were wars, there was love, there was life and death. Minds flowed together in great rivers of consciousness, or shattered in sparkling droplets. There was immortality to be had, of a sort, a continuity of identity through replication and confluence across billions upon billions of years. Everywhere they found life. Nowhere did they find mind—save what they brought with them or created—no other against which human advancement could be tested. With time, the stars died like candles. But humans fed on bloated gravitational fat, and achieved a power undreamed of in earlier ages. They learned of other universes from which theirs had evolved. Those earlier, simpler realities too were empty of mind, a branching tree of emptiness reaching deep into the hyperpast. It is impossible to understand what minds of that age—the peak of humankind, a species hundreds of billions of times older than humankind—were like. They did not seek to acquire, not to breed, not even to learn. They had nothing in common with us, their ancestors of the afterglow. Nothing but the will to survive. And even that was to be denied them by time. The universe aged: indifferent, harsh, hostile, and ultimately lethal. There was despair and loneliness. There was an age of war, an obliteration of trillion-year memories, a bonfire of identity. There was an age of suicide, as the finest of humanity chose self-destruction against further purposeless time and struggle. The great rivers of mind guttered and dried. But some persisted: just a tributary, the stubborn, still unwilling to yield to the darkness, to accept the increasing confines of a universe growing inexorably old. And, at last, they realized that this was wrong. It wasn't supposed to have been like this. Burning the last of the universe's resources, the final down-streamers—dogged, all but insane—reached to the deepest past. And—oh. Watch the Moon, Malenfant. Watch the Moon. It's starting—

All dogs are predators, but over thousands of generations, we’ve created sporting breeds to be exceptionally focused predators. All dogs like to dig and chase small prey, but terriers are superdriven to dig and find rodents. All dogs love to run, but greyhounds can run up to forty miles an hour, and huskies can run for hours and hours on end. All dogs have the natural ability to fight or wrestle with one another, but the bully breeds have been genetically engineered to fight to the death. The more pure the bloodline, the more that genetic “boost” will probably play a part in your dog’s behavior. That’s why some owners claim that their “mutts” make mellower pets, because, they theorize, their DNA has been somewhat diluted, and their breed-related drives diffused as a result.

The Snow Leopard’s Tale is mesmeric. Tom McIntyre has compressed so many things into so few pages that I can think of only a few other short books that can compare. It was worth the wait for all of us who look forward to reading anything with his name under the title.

kennel cards and medical paperwork—did not match the animals’ DNA results 87.5 percent of the time. Additionally, the people who labeled the dogs could not agree with one another on which breeds were likely present in which dog. There was no interobserver reliability.

We’ve clearly placed form over function when it comes to choosing dogs for the home. Maybe this is because we are such a visual species ourselves, but I think it’s a shame, and some breeds are being ruined because of this tendency to stress how they look over what they can do. Bulldogs, more commonly known as English bulldogs, are a prime example of this overemphasis on physical appearance, particularly within so-called purebred dogs. Among the laundry list of physical ailments that English bulldogs suffer from—eye and ear problems, skin infections, respiratory ailments, immune system and neurological disorders, and problems with moving, eating/digesting, copulating, and bearing puppies—many are attributable to breeding practices to produce dogs with what are considered desirable physical traits.

Dream House as an Exercise in Point of View You were not always just a You. I was whole—a symbiotic relationship between my best and worst parts—and then, in one sense of the definition, I was cleaved: a neat lop that took first person—that assured, confident woman, the girl detective, the adventurer—away from second, who was always anxious and vibrating like a too-small breed of dog. I left, and then lived: moved to the East Coast, wrote a book, moved in with a beautiful woman, got married, bought a rambling Victorian in Philadelphia. Learned things: how to make Manhattans and use starchy pasta water to create sauces and keep succulents alive. But you. You took a job as a standardized-test grader. You drove seven hours to Indiana every other week for a year. You churned out mostly garbage for the second half of your MFA. You cried in front of many people. You missed readings, parties, the supermoon. You tried to tell your story to people who didn’t know how to listen. You made a fool of yourself, in more ways than one. I thought you died, but writing this, I’m not sure you did.

Anyway,” the agent said abruptly. “I just . . . wanted you to know that I’m sorry for everything. I want to help you and the rest of the Order in any way I can, so if there is anything you need, you know where I am.” “Chase,” Dante said as the male turned to leave the room. “Apology accepted, man. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. I haven’t been fair to you either. Despite our differences, know that I respect you. The Agency lost a good one the day they cut you loose.” Chase’s smile was crooked as he acknowledged the praise with a short nod. Dante cleared his throat. “And about that offer of help . . .” “Name it.” “Tess was walking a dog when the Rogues attacked her tonight. Ugly little mutt, not good for much more than a foot-warmer, but it’s special to her. Actually, it was a gift from me, more or less. Anyway, the dog was running loose on its leash when I saw it a block or so away from Ben Sullivan’s place.” “You want me to go retrieve a wayward canine, is that where this is heading?” “Well, you did say anything, didn’t you?” “So I did.” Chase chuckled. “All right. I will.” Dante dug his keys to his Porsche out of his pocket and tossed them to the other vampire. As Chase turned to be on his way again, Dante added, “The little beast answers to the name Harvard, by the way.” “Harvard,” Chase drawled, shaking his head and throwing a smirk in Dante’s direction. “I don’t suppose that’s a coincidence.” Dante shrugged. “Good to see that Ivy League pedigree of yours comes in handy for something.” “Jesus Christ, warrior. You really were busting my ass since the minute I came on board, weren’t you?” “Hey, by all comparisons, I was kind. Do yourself a favor and don’t look too closely at Niko’s shooting target, unless you’re very secure about your manhood.” “Assholes,” Chase muttered, but there was only humor in his tone. “Sit tight, and I’ll be back in a few with your mutt. Anything else you’re gonna hit me up for now that I opened my big yap about wanting to get square with you?” “Actually, there might be something else,” Dante replied, his thoughts going sober when he considered Tess and any kind of future that might be deserving of her. “But we can talk about that when you get back, yeah?” Chase nodded, catching on to the turn in mood. “Yeah. Sure we can.

As they entered, a wire-haired fox terrier of irreproachable breeding, rose from the hearth-rug and came to meet them with leisurely dignity. Marcus effected an introduction hastily. ‘Foon,’ he said. ‘Written “Featherstonehaugh”.’ Somewhat to his host’s embarrassment Mr Campion shook hands with the dog, who seemed to appreciate the courtesy, for he followed them back to the hearth-rug, waiting for them to be seated before he took up his position on the rug again, where he sat during the rest of the proceedings with the same air of conscious breeding which characterized his master.

Over the generations, we have bred and inbred our canine companions to the point of disease and deformity. One analysis of popular dog breeds turned up a total of 396 inherited diseases affecting the canines; each breed included in the analysis had been linked to at least four, and as many as seventy-seven, different hereditary afflictions… In some cases, these disorders are nasty side effects of a small gene pool, of generations of breeding related dogs or relying on just a few popular sires. In others, they’re due to intentional selection for the exaggerated physical traits prized by kennel clubs and dog show judges.

Sacks concurred. “Breed has been over focused on as the problem,” he said. “It’s a lot more complicated than that. Any bite involves a confluence of factors: a dog’s genetics, the victim’s behavior, the dog’s socialization, the dog’s medical history, the owner’s training. You can’t isolate one factor and say ‘That’s it!

Dogs don’t know what they look like. Dogs don’t even know what size they are. No doubt it’s our fault, for breeding them into such weird shapes and sizes. My brother’s dachshund, standing tall at eight inches, would attack a Great Dane in the full conviction that she could tear it apart. When a little dog is assaulting its ankles the big dog often stands there looking confused — “Should I eat it? Will it eat me? I am bigger than it, aren’t I?” But then the Great Dane will come and try to sit in your lap and mash you flat, under the impression that it is a Peke-a-poo… Cats know exactly where they begin and end. When they walk slowly out the door that you are holding open for them, and pause, leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it. They know you have to keep holding the door open. That is why their tail is there. It is a cat’s way of maintaining a relationship. Housecats know that they are small, and that it matters. When a cat meets a threatening dog and can’t make either a horizontal or a vertical escape, it’ll suddenly triple its size, inflating itself into a sort of weird fur blowfish, and it may work, because the dog gets confused again — “I thought that was a cat. Aren’t I bigger than cats? Will it eat me?” … A lot of us humans are like dogs: we really don’t know what size we are, how we’re shaped, what we look like. The most extreme example of this ignorance must be the people who design the seats on airplanes. At the other extreme, the people who have the most accurate, vivid sense of their own appearance may be dancers. What dancers look like is, after all, what they do.” — Ursula Le Guin, in The Wave in the Mind (via fortooate)

In the midst of them, the blackest and largest in that dark setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared. He lay at his ease in a rough chariot drawn and propelled by his men, and instead of a right hand he had the iron hook with which ever and anon he encouraged them to increase their pace. As dogs this terrible man treated and addressed them, and as dogs they obeyed him. In person he was cadaverous [dead looking] and blackavized, and his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance. His eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots appeared in them and lit them up horribly. In manner, something of the grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with an air, and I have been told that he was a raconteur of repute. He was never more sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his demeanour, showed him one of a different cast from his crew. A man of indomitable courage, it was said that the only thing he shied at was the sight of his own blood, which was thick and of an unusual colour. In dress he somewhat aped the attire associated with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts; and in his mouth he had a holder of his own contrivance which enabled him to smoke two cigars at once. But undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw.

The new home fashion will be spare. This will be the return of an old WASP style: the good, frayed carpet; dogs that look like dogs and not a hairdo in a teacup, as miniature dogs back from the canine boutique do now. A friend, noting what has and will continue to happen with car sales, said America will look like Havana—old cars and faded grandeur. It won't. It will look like 1970, only without the bell-bottoms and excessive hirsuteness. More families will have to live together. More people will drink more regularly. Secret smoking will make a comeback as part of a return to simple pleasures. People will slow down. Mainstream religion will come back. Walker Percy again: Bland affluence breeds fundamentalism. Bland affluence is over.

One of PETA's agenda items is the extinction of problem breeds like the pit bull; the claim is that making them extinct is the only way to protect the animals from abuse. Apparently the problem of abuse is not one that involves the behavior of the abusive human. Following this line of "ethical" thinking, the problem of divorce should be solved by banning marriage, and child abuse is best addressed by euthanizing children.

The majority of mixed-breed dogs in America are not crosses of two purebred parents, he explained, but multigenerational mutts, or mutts mixed with other mutts mixed with other mutts. Because the number of genes that determine the dog’s shape is extremely small, and so many variations within those genes are possible, looking at a dog’s physical chassis and making a guess as to its probable heritage will inexorably lead to error.

Cavalier King Charles spaniels, we learnt, often suffer from the brain abnormality known as a Chiari malformation, which humans also get. Labradors can develop malignant meningiomas. The spaniels’ problem is the result of selective breeding aimed to produce the small round head which wins points at dog shows. The malformation leads to spinal cord damage, and the poor creatures suffer from intractable pain and scratch themselves incessantly.

Of the thirty-three breeds represented in the sample, “pit bulls” (yet again classed as one “breed”) scored lower than average on all scales of human-directed aggression. On owner-directed aggression, they scored even lower than Labradors. Pit bulls scored slightly higher than average on aggression directed toward other dogs, but several other breeds, including dachshunds, equaled or surpassed them on that scale. The pit bulls were well within the range of normal.

Take tail docking…in which the last several inches of a puppy’s tail are removed, usually without anesthesia, sometimes with extremely crude instruments such as scissors or razors. The American Kennel Club (AKC), which develops guidelines used to judge canines in competition, prefers boxers, rottweilers, cocker spaniels, and dogs belonging to dozens of other breeds to have docked tails. In other words, an ideal specimen is one that’s been surgically reshaped by humans.

I’ve always thought that every person who chooses to breed their pet, intentionally or not, should spend one day in a humane shelter helping to euthanize the animals who are out of time. That might cure their need to have a litter because it is “such a good dog,” or because they want their children to experience the birthing process, or because their pet is papered, or because they want a little extra pocket money. Being sweet or loving or gentle are not good enough reasons to breed a dog. Perhaps witnessing the endless number of animals who are euthanized, many who are registered or papered or who once had loving homes, will cure their need to bring more animals into this overpopulated world.

Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation. In their positive form, they become diplomats. Talking outside the glass when someone else blunders helps to change the subject. But fools don’t interest us, either. They’re never creative, their talent is all secondhand, so they don’t submit manuscripts to publishers. Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent. It’s a dying breed, the embodiment of all the bourgeois virtues. What they really need is a Verdurin salon or even a chez Guer-mantes. Do you students still read such things?

And by the early 1970s our little parable of Sam and Sweetie is exactly what happened to the North American Golden Retriever. One field-trial dog, Holway Barty, and two show dogs, Misty Morn’s Sunset and Cummings’ Gold-Rush Charlie, won dozens of blue ribbons between them. They were not only gorgeous champions; they had wonderful personalities. Consequently, hundreds of people wanted these dogs’ genes to come into their lines, and over many matings during the 1970s the genes of these three dogs were flung far and wide throughout the North American Golden Retriever population, until by 2010 Misty Morn’s Sunset alone had 95,539 registered descendants, his number of unregistered ones unknown. Today hundreds of thousands of North American Golden Retrievers are descended from these three champions and have received both their sweet dispositions and their hidden time bombs. Unfortunately for these Golden Retrievers, and for the people who love them, one of these time bombs happens to be cancer. To be fair, a so-called cancer gene cannot be traced directly to a few famous sires, but using these sires so often increases the chance of recessive genes meeting—for good and for ill. Today, in the United States, 61.4 percent of Golden Retrievers die of cancer, according to a survey conducted by the Golden Retriever Club of America and the Purdue School of Veterinary Medicine. In Great Britain, a Kennel Club survey found almost exactly the same result, if we consider that those British dogs—loosely diagnosed as dying of “old age” and “cardiac conditions” and never having been autopsied—might really be dying of a variety of cancers, including hemangiosarcoma, a cancer of the lining of the blood vessels and the spleen. This sad history of the Golden Retriever’s narrowing gene pool has played out across dozens of other breeds and is one of the reasons that so many of our dogs spend a lot more time in veterinarians’ offices than they should and die sooner than they might. In genetic terms, it comes down to the ever-increasing chance that both copies of any given gene are derived from the same ancestor, a probability expressed by a number called the coefficient of inbreeding. Discovered in 1922 by the American geneticist Sewall Wright, the coefficient of inbreeding ranges from 0 to 100 percent and rises as animals become more inbred.

I did research online to see if I could find a rescue group that would take her, and instead I found Pit Bull Rescue Central (wwwpbrc.net), a clearinghouse of listings for pit bulls all across the country, all in need of homes, most with horrific histories of abuse. The Web site, completely volunteer-run, offers information on the breed, on what to do if you have found a pit bull, and on how to test a dog's temperament; it also stringently screens applicants trying to adopt one of the listed dogs. To list a dog, you have to fax the vet records, including proof that the animal has been spayed or neutered. I have never seen so thorough a site-and all of the "staff" got involved with the breed the same way I did: by finding a stray pit bull whom no one else would help with or take off their hands.

The few remaining men can exist out their puny days dropped out on drugs or strutting around in drag or passively watching the high-powered female in action, fulfilling themselves as spectators, vicarious liver*, or breeding in the cow pasture with the toadies, or they can go off to the nearest friendly suicide center where they will be quietly, quickly, and painlessly gassed to death. Prior to the institution of automation, to the replacement of males by machines, the male should be of use to the female, wait on her, cater to her slightest whim, obey her every command, be totally subservient to her, exist in perfect obedience to her will, as opposed to the completely warped, degenerate situation we have now of men, not only not only not existing at all, cluttering up the world with their ignominious presence, but being pandered to and groveled before by the mass of females, millions of women piously worshiping the Golden Calf, the dog leading the master on a leash, when in fact the male, short of being a drag queen, is least miserable when his dogginess is recognized – no unrealistic emotional demands are made of him and the completely together female is calling the shots. Rational men want to be squashed, stepped on, crushed and crunched, treated as the curs, the filth that they are, have their repulsiveness confirmed. The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against their disgustingness, when they see SCUM barreling down on them, will cling in terror to Big Mama with her Big Bouncy Boobies, but Boobies won’t protect them against SCUM; Big Mama will be clinging to Big Daddy, who will be in the corner shitting in his forceful, dynamic pants. Men who are rational, however, won’t kick or struggle or raise a distressing fuss, but will just sit back, relax, enjoy the show and ride the waves to their demise.

As soon as the hijackers’ names had been publicly released, Acxiom had searched its massive data banks, which take up five acres in tiny Conway, Arkansas. And it had found some very interesting data on the perpetrators of the attacks. In fact, it turned out, Acxiom knew more about eleven of the nineteen hijackers than the entire U.S. government did—including their past and current addresses and the names of their housemates. We may never know what was in the files Acxiom gave the government (though one of the executives told a reporter that Acxiom’s information had led to deportations and indictments). But here’s what Acxiom knows about 96 percent of American households and half a billion people worldwide: the names of their family members, their current and past addresses, how often they pay their credit card bills whether they own a dog or a cat (and what breed it is), whether they are right-handed or left-handed, what kinds of medication they use (based on pharmacy records) … the list of data points is about 1,500 items long.

In a sexist, male-dominated society, women have been selected over many generations for submissiveness, looks, juvenility etc. They certainly weren’t selected for intelligence and aggression. Is the type of women we have today a reflection of a dog-like breeding process? Have we actually bred overly emotional, underly rational women; women who are obsessed with appearance, compliance and emotional intelligence? Just as dogs were bred to be attuned to the moods of their owners, is the same true of women? Were women selected according to how well they fitted in with the tastes of their dominant, aggressive male masters? They’re so emotionally smart because men bred them for exactly that purpose. Women are not renowned for aggression, dominance, assertiveness and intelligence because dominant men didn’t want any of those traits in their women. All SUPERWOMEN (the type of women who could give men a run for their money) were DESELECTED by a dominant male culture that didn’t value talented women and just wanted subservient, pretty adornments.

Christ. Study the roster. Study everybody’s photos,” she said. “Where’s the packing list for Earl?” Et cetera, et cetera . . . That spring, the gallery was putting up Ping Xi’s first solo show—“Bowwowwow”—and Natasha was up in arms about every little detail. She probably would have fired me sooner had she not been so busy. I tried to feign interest and mask my horror whenever Natasha talked about Ping Xi’s “dog pieces.” He had taxidermied a variety of pure breeds: a poodle, a Pomeranian, a Scottish terrier. Black Lab, Dachshund. Even a little Siberian husky pup. He’d been working on them for a long time. He and Natasha had grown close since his cum paintings had sold so well. During the installation, I overheard one of the interns whispering to the electrician. “There’s a rumor going around that the artist gets the dogs as puppies, raises them, then kills them when they’re the size he wants. He locks them in an industrial freezer because that’s the most humane way to euthanize them without compromising the look of the animal. When they thaw, he can get them into whatever position he wants.

Ah!" said the doctor, in his most complacent manner, "here is the opportunity I have long been waiting for. I have often desired to test and taste the indian mode of cooking. What do you suppose this is?" holding up the dripping morsel. Unable to obtain the desired information, the doctor, whose naturally good appetite had been sensibly sharpened by his recent exercise á la quadrupède, set to with a will and ate heartily of the mysterious contents of the kettle. "What can this be?" again inquired the doctor. He was only satisfied on one point, that it was delicious - a dish fit for a king. Just then Gurrier, the half-breed, entered the lodge. He could solve the mystery, having spent years among the Indians. To him the doctor appealed for information. Fishing out a huge piece and attacking it with the voracity of a hungry wolf, he was not long in determining what the doctor had supped so heartily upon. His first words settled the mystery: "Why this is dog." I will not attempt to repeat the few but emphatic words uttered by the heartedly disgusted member of the medical fraternity as he rushed from the lodge.

We were working on the idea about dogs’ Internet searches, and first we debated whether the sketch should feature real dogs or Henrietta and Viv in dog costumes (because cast members were always, unfailingly, trying to get more air time, we quickly went with the latter). Then we discussed where it should take place (the computer cluster in a public library, but, even though all this mattered for was the establishing shot, we got stalled on whether that library should be New York’s famous Main Branch building on Fifth Avenue, with the lion statues in front, a generic suburban library in Kansas City, or a generic suburban library in Jacksonville, Florida, which was where Viv was from). Then we really got stalled on the breeds of dogs. Out of loyalty to my stepfather and Sugar, I wanted at least one to be a beagle. Viv said that it would work best if one was really big and one was really little, and Henrietta said she was fine with any big dog except a German Shepherd because she’d been bitten by her neighbor’s German Shepherd in third grade. After forty minutes we’d decided on a St. Bernard and a Chihuahua—I eventually conceded that Chihuahuas were funnier than beagles. We decided to go with the Florida location for the establishing shot because the lions in front of the New York Main Branch could preempt or diminish the appearance of the St. Bernard. Then we’d arrived at the fun part, which was the search terms. With her mouth full of beef kebab, Viv said, “Am I adopted?” With my mouth full of spanakopita, I said, “Am I a good girl?” With her mouth full of falafel, Henrietta said, “Am I five or thirty-five?” “Why is thunder scary?” I said. “Discreet crotch-sniffing techniques,” Henrietta said. “Cheap mani-pedis in my area,” Viv said. “Oh, and cheapest self-driving car.” “Best hamburgers near me,” I said. “What is halitosis,” Henrietta said. “Halitosis what to do,” I said. “Where do humans pee,” Viv said. “Taco Bell Chihuahua male or female,” I said. “Target bull terrier married,” Viv said. “Lassie plastic surgery,” Henrietta said. “Funny cat videos,” I said. “Corgis embarrassing themselves YouTube,” Viv said. “YouTube little dog scares away big dog,” I said. “Doghub two poodles and one corgi,” Henrietta said. “Waxing my tail,” I said. “Is my tail a normal size,” Viv said.

The suffering of abused pets amounts to a tiny fraction of the suffering we inflict on animals. In 2012 there were 164 million owned dogs and cats in the United States.2 The majority of them probably live reasonably good lives, but even if every single one of them were abused, this number would be dwarfed by the 9.1 billion animals annually raised and slaughtered for food in the United States.3 Factory-farmed animals have to endure a lifetime of suffering much more severe than the typical dog or cat, and in the United States there are fifty-five times as many factory-farmed animals as there are dogs and cats. Anyone who kept a dog confined in the way that breeding sows are frequently confined in factory farms—in crates so small they cannot even turn around or walk a single step—would be liable to prosecution for cruelty. In The Animal Activists’ Handbook Matt Ball and Bruce Friedrich make a startling claim that vividly illustrates the vastly greater suffering of animals raised for food compared to other ways in which we cause animals to suffer: “Every year, hundreds of millions of animals—many times more than the total number killed for fur, housed in shelters, and locked in laboratories combined—don’t even make it to slaughter. They actually suffer to death.

I told him he must carry it thus. It was evident the sagacious little creature, having lost its mother, had adopted him for a father. I succeeded, at last, in quietly releasing him, and took the little orphan, which was no bigger than a cat, in my arms, pitying its helplessness. The mother appeared as tall as Fritz. I was reluctant to add another mouth to the number we had to feed; but Fritz earnestly begged to keep it, offering to divide his share of cocoa-nut milk with it till we had our cows. I consented, on condition that he took care of it, and taught it to be obedient to him. Turk, in the mean time, was feasting on the remains of the unfortunate mother. Fritz would have driven him off, but I saw we had not food sufficient to satisfy this voracious animal, and we might ourselves be in danger from his appetite. We left him, therefore, with his prey, the little orphan sitting on the shoulder of his protector, while I carried the canes. Turk soon overtook us, and was received very coldly; we reproached him with his cruelty, but he was quite unconcerned, and continued to walk after Fritz. The little monkey seemed uneasy at the sight of him, and crept into Fritz's bosom, much to his inconvenience. But a thought struck him; he tied the monkey with a cord to Turk's back, leading the dog by another cord, as he was very rebellious at first; but our threats and caresses at last induced him to submit to his burden. We proceeded slowly, and I could not help anticipating the mirth of my little ones, when they saw us approach like a pair of show-men. I advised Fritz not to correct the dogs for attacking and killing unknown animals. Heaven bestows the dog on man, as well as the horse, for a friend and protector. Fritz thought we were very fortunate, then, in having two such faithful dogs; he only regretted that our horses had died on the passage, and only left us the ass. "Let us not disdain the ass," said I; "I wish we had him here; he is of a very fine breed, and would be as useful as a horse to us." In such conversations, we arrived at the banks of our river before we were aware. Flora barked to announce our approach, and Turk answered so loudly, that the terrified little monkey leaped from his back to the shoulder of its protector, and would not come down. Turk ran off to meet his companion, and our dear family soon appeared on the opposite shore, shouting with joy at our happy return. We crossed at the same place as we had done in the morning, and embraced each other. Then began such a noise of exclamations. "A monkey! a real, live monkey! Ah! how delightful! How glad we are! How did you catch him?

Er, hello, Chewie," he said politely. "Woof," the dog said back. "Chewie is a Newfoundland," Beka explained. "They're great water dogs. They swim better than we do, and even have webbed feet. They're often used for water rescue, and the breed started out as working dogs for fishermen." "Uh-huh... Chewie - I guess you named him for Chewbacca in Star Wars. I can see why; they're both gigantic and furry." Beka giggled. "I never thought of that. Actually, Chewie is short for Chudo-Yudo. Also, he chews on stuff a lot, so it seemed fitting." "Chudo what?" Marcus said. The dog made a snuffling sound that might have been canine laughter. "Chudo-Yudo," Beka repeated. "He's a character out of Russian fairy tales, the dragon that guards the Water of Life and Death. You never heard of him?" Marcus shook his head. "My father used to tell the occasional Irish folk tale when I was a kid, but I'm not familiar with Russian ones at all. Sorry." "Oh, don't be," she said cheerfully. "Most of them were pretty gory, and they hardly ever had happy endings." "Right." Marcus looked at the dog, who gazed alertly back with big brown eyes, as if trying to figure out if the former Marine was edible or not. "So, you named him after a mythical dragon from a depressing Russian story. Does anyone get eaten in that story, just out of curiosity?" Chewie sank down onto the floor with a put-upon sigh, and Beka shook her head at Marcus. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course people got eaten. But don't worry. Chewie hasn't taken a bite out of anyone in years. He's very mellow for a dragon.

There is no shortage of more stable generalizations about dangerous dogs, though. A 1991 study in Denver, for example, compared 178 dogs that had a history of biting people with a random sample of 178 dogs with no history of biting. The breeds were scattered: German shepherds, Akitas, and Chow Chows were among those most heavily represented. (There were no pit bulls among the biting dogs in the study, because Denver banned pit bulls in 1989.) But a number of other, more stable factors stand out. The biters were 6.2 times as likely to be male than female, and 2.6 times as likely to be intact than neutered. The Denver study also found that biters were 2.8 times as likely to be chained as unchained. “About twenty percent of the dogs involved in fatalities were chained at the time, and had a history of long-term chaining,” Lockwood said. “Now, are they chained because they are aggressive or aggressive because they are chained? It’s a bit of both. These are animals that have not had an opportunity to become socialized to people. They don’t necessarily even know that children are small human beings. They tend to see them as prey.” In many cases, vicious dogs are hungry or in need of medical attention. Often, the dogs had a history of aggressive incidents, and, overwhelmingly, dog-bite victims were children (particularly small boys) who were physically vulnerable to attack and may also have unwittingly done things to provoke the dog, like teasing it, or bothering it while it was eating. The strongest connection of all, though, is between the trait of dog viciousness and certain kinds of dog owners. In about a quarter of fatal dog-bite cases, the dog owners were previously involved in illegal fighting. The dogs that bite people are, in many cases, socially isolated because their owners are socially isolated, and they are vicious because they have owners who want a vicious dog. The junkyard German shepherd — which looks as if it would rip your throat out — and the German-shepherd guide dog are the same breed. But they are not the same dog, because they have owners with different intentions. “A

More to the point, one cannot understand The Holocaust without understanding the intentions, ideology, and mechanisms that were put in place in 1933. The eugenics movement may have come to a catastrophic crescendo with the Hitler regime, but the political movement, the world-view, the ideology, and the science that aspired to breed humans like prized horses began almost 100 years earlier. More poignantly, the ideology and those legal and governmental mechanisms of a eugenic world-view inevitably lead back to the British and American counterparts that Hitler’s scientists collaborated with. Posterity must gain understanding of the players that made eugenics a respectable scientific and political movement, as Hitler’s regime was able to evade wholesale condemnation in those critical years between 1933 and 1943 precisely because eugenics had gained international acceptance. As this book will evidence, Hitler’s infamous 1933 laws mimicked those already in place in the United States, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Canada. So what is this scientific and political movement that for 100 years aspired to breed humans like dogs or horses? Eugenics is quite literally, as defined by its principal proponents, an attempt at “directing evolution” by controlling any aspect of human existence that affects human heredity. From its onset, Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and the man credited with the creation of the science of eugenics, knew that the cause of eugenics had to be observed with religious fervor and dedication. As the quote on the opening pages of this book illustrates, a eugenicist must “intrude, intrude, intrude.” A vigilant control over anything and everything that affects the gene pool is essential to eugenics. The policies could not allow for the individual to enjoy self-government or self-determination any more than a horse breeder can allow the animals to determine whom to breed with. One simply cannot breed humans like horses without imbuing the state with the level of control a farmer has over its livestock, not only controlling procreation, but also the diet, access to medical services, and living conditions.

Excerpt from Storm’s Eye by Dean Gray With a final drag and drop, Jordan Rayne sent his latest creation winging its way toward the publisher. He looked up, squinted at that little clock in the right hand corner of his monitor, and removed his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. His cover art was finished and shipped, just in time for lunch. He sighed and stood, rolling his shoulders and bending side to side, his back cracking in protest as the muscles loosened after having been hunched over the screen for so long. Sam raised his head, tilting it enquiringly at him, and Jordan laughed. “Yeah, I know what you want, some lunch and a nice long walk along the beach, hmm?” Jordan smiled fondly at the furry ball of energy he’d saved from certain death. With his mom’s recent death it was just Sam and him in the house. Sometimes he wondered what kept him here, now that the last thread tethering him to the island was severed. Sam limped over and nuzzled at his hand. When Jordan had first found him out on the main road, hurt and bleeding, he hadn’t been sure the pooch would make it. Taylor, his best friend and the local vet, had done what she could. At the time, Jordan simply didn’t have the deep pockets for the fancy surgery needed to mend Sam’s leg perfectly, he could barely afford the drugs to keep his mom in treatment. So they’d patched him up as well as they could, Taylor extending herself further than he could ever repay, and hoped for the best. The dog had made a startling recovery, urged on by plenty of rest and good food and lots of love, and had flourished, the slight limp now barely noticeable. Jordan’s conscience still twinged as he watched Sam limp over to his dish, but he had barely been keeping things together at the time. He had done the best he could. He’d done his best to find Sam’s real owners as well, papering downtown Bar Harbor with a hand-drawn sketch of the dog, but to no avail. The only thing it had prompted was one kind soul wanting to buy the illustration. But no one had ever come forward to claim the “goldendoodle,” which Taylor had told him was a golden retriever/standard poodle cross. Who had a dog breed like that anyway? Summer people! Jordan shook his head, grinning at the dog’s foolish antics, weaving in and around his legs like he was still a little pup instead of the fifty-pound fuzzball he actually was now. So without meaning to at all, Sam had drifted into Jordan’s life and stayed, a loyal, faithful companion.