categories, or, "soul of the new south"

Cross-posted from my Tumblr image blog Village Dog (such as it is - and where you can see the subtitle of the magazine more clearly).  Also see this earlier post on dogs and guns and other accoutrements of Southern history.

cruel death, good death

"Oreo the Abused Pit Bull is Euthanized," New York Times, November 13, 2009:

Oreo, a dog that was nursed back to health after surviving being thrown off the roof of a six-story building, was killed Friday by lethal injection.

A 2-year-old pit bull, Oreo was euthanized in the New York City headquarters of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals after the organization rebuffed last-minute pleas to spare her life. The organization called the dog a danger to the public.

On Friday morning, Oreo received a last meal of “premium quality” kibble and canned dog food. She was then given a sedative, though she appeared “content, alert and panting,” according to an organization spokesman. Oreo was injected in the leg with an overdose of sodium pentobarbital and was pronounced dead shortly after 3 p.m.

Oreo broke two legs in the fall. News reports of the incident, accompanied by photos of the brown and white dog with her front legs in casts, triggered a flood of adoption offers and financial donations to help pay for the medical care.

However, as Oreo recuperated from her injuries under the care of the A.S.P.C.A., she was increasingly viewed as a danger — difficult to control and “unpredictably aggressive,” according to an organization spokesman.

News of Oreo’s death provoked angry reactions among supporters who had been frantically lobbying the A.S.P.C.A. to delay the euthanasia and allow time to negotiate a deal to transfer Oreo to an animal sanctuary in the Hudson Valley.

Oreo’s case came to public attention in June, when her owner, Fabian Henderson, threw her off the roof of his apartment building at the Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn. Mr. Henderson was convicted of animal cruelty and was scheduled to be sentenced in December.

[ . . . ]

The A.S.P.C.A. rejected [pleas to delay the euthanasia], citing the evaluation of staff members and an outside veterinary behaviorist who said that Oreo could not be rehabilitated. “Animal cruelty isn’t pretty and doesn’t always have a happy ending,” said the society’s president and chief executive, Ed Sayres. “It is ugly and sad and, ultimately, tragic.”

Seven staff members were present during the euthanasia procedure. But the dog’s former owner, Mr. Henderson, was not on hand to witness his pet’s final moments.

* * *

A curious mixed-up creature Oreo was.  A pit, a pet.  Aggressive, abused.  Nursed back to health.  Put back to death.  Content and alert, ugly and sad.  Panting.  White on the inside.

* Revised Dec 2, 2009

how the other half lives

Two snapshots of dogs in Southern social history courtesy of my hometown public library's North Carolina Collection:

Industrialist and early Duke University trustee Julian S. Carr with goat cart, children, dog, and African American servants in fore- and background (ca 1920's, likely at Carr family's Occoneechee Farm)

Five African American women and girls - and photo-crashing dog - in Brookstown area of Durham (ca. 1940)

See full citations here and here; information about Occoneechee Farm and Brookstown courtesy of the superb local history/geography blog Endangered Durham.

ghost dog

Sniff from karolina sobecka on Vimeo.

Sobecka calls Sniff an "interactive public projection."  In her artist's statement, she asks the viewer/reader to imagine an urban interspecies encounter:

As you walk down the street you are approached by a dog. He cautiously and curiously sniffs you as he gets closer. He is on his guard trying to discern your intentions. He will follow you as you walk on and interpret your gestures as friendly or aggressive. He will try to engage you and get you to pay attention to him... As the viewer walks by the projection, her movements are tracked by a custom computer vision system. A CG dog comes up in the projection and sniffs her, following her as she moves in front of the display.

What's being narrated here is a multisensory meet-and-greet between two free-roaming agents - something which is happening less and less, I think, in our leash-lawed, obedience-trained streetscapes. Indeed, as the piece is actually staged, Sniff is not loose on the sidewalk but trapped behind a window. Despite his name, he can follow you but never actually sniff you. The "interaction" here ends up being decidedly one-sided: with Sniff always pacing, jumping, reacting, beseeching.

When I posted this on facebook my friend Paul commented: "shelter dog behavior." In his perceptive reading, Sniff is a projection not so much of dog-human social reciprocity as its opposite.

dogs of mississippi, 2009

* Also see dogs of mississippi, 1947

From "A World Away, Close to Family," a New York Times piece on African American city kids who spend their summers with relatives in the South (story by Robbie Brown, photos by James Patterson):

The sight of a menacing dog outside her Brooklyn apartment would send Amya CaJoie Stewart skittering inside for safety. But not the Rottweiler that prowled the gravel road at her aunt’s house in this sun-cooked rural town. In a flash of bravado, the prim 10-year-old lured the dog with a dish of water, lashed it to a post and named it Sam.

“That’s what you do in Mississippi,” Amya explained. “You tie the dogs in your yard.”

* * *

The matriarch of the family, Estella Mae Oaties, 81, supervises Amya during the day. Behind her house, she keeps several dogs as pets, and it is Amya's job to feed and water them. When she grows up, Amya says, she might want to become a veterinarian.

dogs of mississippi, 1947

* Also see dogs of mississippi, 2009

William Faulkner and his fyces (photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson, courtesy of Iconic Photos)

more eyes that have looked at jim crow

Just looked again at the photographs in my previous post about the early-20th century African American photographer Michael Francis Blake - was struck, suddenly, by the strange elision of dogs in that post. When I talked about the "eyes that have looked at Jim Crow," I was implicitly talking only of the eyes of the human beings in the pictures. Is it nonsensical to think of the dogs as also having witnessed segregation? To ask what racism among humans look like to dog - or perhaps, more apropos, what it smelt and felt like?