I read a lot of dog books. Fiction with dogs as characters; books about dog psychology; tomes that cover the history of the relationship between people and dogs. I’ve written here before about some of the great dog books I’ve read. Now, a few months later I find I have another stack of eight books about our four-legged friends. Half of them are quite old — somepublished more than 50 years ago. Others are newer. None of them suck. Today’s post: the older books.

My Dog Tulip is the 1956 memoir of unwilling dog ownership that led to unfathomable dog love by JR Ackerley, a British literary icon and one of the first employees of the BBC in the 1920s. Openly gay, he named the dog he didn’t really want to call his book My Dog Tulip, but My Dog Queenie — the dog’s real name. But his editors thought that it was a little too in your face for the time. The book chronicles the growing love affair between dog and person, and Ackerley’s attempts to breed her, understand her, and give her back a measure of the happiness she provided for him in his middle years.  The difference in how we treat dogs now, versus then, is evident in his descriptions — letting dogs run off leash, not spaying or neutering, letting dogs poop on the street, encouraging the huntress in your dog to have at the local squirrel population. But there is also something of our current love of companion animals in his writing that is very different from how most animals lived in the middle of the last century. Ackerley loved Queenie/Tulip as a family member. She wasn’t a pet who lived outside and was tossed some kibble now and then.

Similar in his attitude to dogs was Nobel prize winning Konrad Lorenz. A founder of modern ethology, Lorenz’ book Man Meets Dog published in 1950 and evoking the kind of love for his animals that most scientists of his era try to avoid talking about. The man is both scientist and pet lover. His opinions about training are more akin to the positive reinforcement of now than the punishment based training of his own era. It’s rare that you can read a book about animal behavior written a couple of generations ago and still get some good ideas for how to choose and raise an animal. This book is one. Added bonus: cute little drawings he did of his own pets permeate the book.

I’ve talked before about how hard it is to give dogs a major voice in a work of fiction and have it seem more adult than a Clifford the Big Red Dog book. But there are two old ones that I love — love enough to read one of them a second time and laugh all over again. First is Flush, a biography of Elizabeth Barret Browning’s dog published in 1933 by Virginia Wolf. I could drop another famous literary name here, but why bother? Okay, I will: the dog was originally owned by one of the famous Mitford girls (think Hons & Rebels and Love in a Cold Climate). The story is told from the point of view of the dog, but not in his voice. It is an endearing book and the best thing by Virginia Wolf I’ve read. Keep in mind I’ve only read A Room of One’s Own.

The book I like best of the two is The Ugly Dachshund by one of my favorite authors of the early to mid-20th century, GB Stern. The author of the Mosaic trilogy — The Matriarch is the best of the three — Stern writes the kind of comedies of manners that made Jane Austen famous. She was also a big player in early Hollywood. I’ve read most of what she’s written — it can be hard to find. But The Ugly Dachshund, published first in 1938, is one the few of her books that remains available. Told from the perspective of a group of dogs — who charmingly refer to people as the Legs (Master Legs, Supreme Legs) — it focuses on the poor perception of a very large Great Dane who hasn’t figured out that he isn’t a dachshund, like most of the other dogs in his family. He doesn’t know why he can’t fit under things, why the Legs don’t let him on their laps. He’s something of a puppy dressed in a really big dog suit. His eventual metamorphosis, which you can guess at given the title and its relationship to a fairy tale of a similar name, is a delight to read. There are some particularly wry observations by the aptly named visiting terrier, Voltaire, who makes jokes than none but himself (and the reader) can understand.

The book makes me want to go find a big dog and offer him or her a place on my lap. But just for a minute.

Tomorrow: newer books about dogs.