What is the smartest dog you have ever met?
Tintin is a German shepherd who has been a Los Angeles police dog and when he retired he was adopted by an Austrian friend, who took him to Paris. He now obeys orders in his native English, his master's German, and French.
In Parisian French?
If you want me to tell you the truth, I think that dogs understand our protolanguage from tones, gestures and modulations...
Chomskyan deep structure?
They understand what they need to adapt and survive with us. The smart dog understands what interests him in any language.
Like people, then.
That was already demonstrated by Darwin, a great friend of dogs, whom he adored: being intelligent is not knowing much, but knowing what is necessary.
Who is this handsome dog?
She's the family dog: Cassie...I'll take my picture with her. With the other, a greyhound, she could not, because she is a forbidden dog.
does it bite?
No way! He is very affectionate, even too much with whom he should not, if he does not sniff out any game, and for this reason it is prohibited. Richard II prohibited the greyhounds to all his English subjects on pain of whipping and major imprisonment. Only noblemen could hunt with them and free men were allowed to have them but unused for hunting.
Was it a dangerous breed?
The greyhound is a great hunter and the king did not want his servants to steal game.
¿Cassie caza?
She's on the couch all day and I don't know who has a harder time taking her out for a walk: her or me.
Is he a dogopolite?
In Chester, modern dogopolis.
Isn't it cruel to have a dog locked up in a small apartment?
Being locked up is the price Dogopolitans pay today for living long and well. Before the 19th century, city dogs were free, but also stray street creatures subjected to all kinds of abuse.
Didn't even the English pamper them?
The English have a reputation for animalists and the French for pampering the lap dog, but the truth is that it was we who invented the Canine Home in Battersea in 1871 and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but also kennels and exterminations Millions in them.
When does the city become a dogopolis?
Until the s. In the 18th century, only the nobility had servants in charge of their hunting dogs and companions, which is why in the 19th century, pedigree dogs became aspirational creatures.
From mutts to the dog show?
The increasingly prosperous middle class imitates the nobility in the West and shows off the breeds of its pets in the best neighborhoods. Breed dogs become more expensive and pampered from the cradle to the cemetery: funerals and graves are made for them and a canine confectionery in Paris.
And the life of dogs becomes enviable.
Tailored coats, houses with fountains, hairdressers and dog spas: the Victorian cult of the home includes them together with the slippers, the dressing gown and the fireplace of the elegant home.
And the gloves for their bowel movements?
controversial. The regulations in this regard and authentic documented street battles between supporters and opponents follow one another. But the real canine civil war broke out earlier, during the rabies epidemic of 1830 in Paris, London, and New York.
How was rabies combated?
With fines for not keeping the dog on a leash and with a muzzle and bulldogs and combat breeds were prohibited. Those without a collar were exterminated without further ado. As for the depositions, Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris, ordered the construction of the first canine toilet in the eighties.
Paris, breakwater of the pipi-can.
Do you call them that?
In Barcelona there are already more Dogopolitans than children.
And the city of New York forced the masters to collect the depositions in 1978, not without opposition from some against the police.
Is it possible to prevent them from not being collected?
Frankly, no. But the owners who love their dogs not only keep them clean but also the city where they live so that they are not hated.
Is the good person with his dog?
And remember that feminists were also the first animalists and in London and Paris: they founded canine homes. Parisians called their dogs love machines. For this reason, the psychiatrist Charles Lumas characterized in them an "animalistic mental imbalance to the detriment of their own children."
Who loves does not have love for everyone?
And we will have more and more dogs in our dogópolis, encouraged by social networks...
The pandemic has triggered their number.
Social networks encourage canine exhibitionism by embellishing the master's narcissism. And in the pandemic they alleviated the loneliness, another epidemic, of many.
