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, was adopted by an Austrian friend, who took him to Paris. He now obeys commands in his native English, his master's German and French.
In Parisian French?
If you want me to tell you the truth, I think 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.
This was already demonstrated by Darwin, a great friend of dogs, who adored them: to be intelligent is not to know a lot, but to know what is necessary.
Who is this handsome dog?
It's the family dog - Cassie... I'll take a picture with her. With the other, a greyhound, he could not, because it is a forbidden dog.
bite?
And now! He is very affectionate, even too much with whom he should not be, if he does not smell some piece of hunting, and that is why he is forbidden. Richard II banned greyhounds from all his English subjects under penalty of whipping and imprisonment. Only nobles 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 the serfs to steal pieces from him.
Does La Cassie hunt?
She's on the sofa all day and I don't know who has a harder time taking her out for a walk: her or me.
Is she a dogopolita?
A Chester, dogòpolis moderna.
Isn't it cruel to have a dog locked in a small dog?
Being locked up is the price Dogopolites pay today to live 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 take care of them?
The English have a reputation for animalists and the French for taking care of the lapdog, but the fact is that it was we who invented the Dog Home in Battersea in 1871 and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; but also the kennels and the extermination of millions of dogs in them.
When does the city become a dogopolis?
Until the 18th century only the nobility had servants in charge of their hunting and companion dogs, so in the 19th they became aspirational creatures, pedigree dogs.
Who go to the dog competition?
The increasingly prosperous middle class imitates the gentry in the West and flaunts their pet breeds in the best neighborhoods. Purebred dogs are expensive and cared for from the cradle to the cemetery: they are given funerals and graves and a canine confectionery in Paris.
And the life of a dog becomes enviable.
Tailored coats, fountain houses, grooming salons and dog spas - the Victorian cult of the home includes them along with the mantelpiece, batten and fireplace of the elegant home.
And the gloves for defecation?
controversial The regulations and authentic documented street battles between supporters and opponents follow. But the real canine civil war broke out earlier, during the rabies epidemic of 1830 in Paris, London and New York.
How was the rage fought?
With fines for not wearing a leashed and muzzled dog, and bulldogs and fighting breeds were banned. Those without a collar were simply exterminated. As for defecation, Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris, orders the construction of the first canine toilet in the 1980s.
Paris, avant-garde delpipicà.
Do you call them that?
There are already more Dogopolites than children living in Barcelona.
And in 1978 the city of New York forced the owners to collect the depositions, not without some opposition to the police.
Is it possible to prevent them from being collected?
Frankly, no. But the owner who loves his dog not only keeps him clean but the city where he lives so that he is not hated.
Is the good person good with his dog?
And remember that feminists were also the first animalists in London and Paris: they founded canine homes and defended laws that defended them. Parisian women 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 dog parks thanks to social networks.
The pandemic has shot up the number.
Social networks encourage canine exhibitionism by adorning the owner's narcissism. And in the pandemic they eased the loneliness, another epidemic, of many.
