Dogs in the Canon

By Stefano Guerra
Translated by Rosella Fresani and Isabella Bernini

According to the traditional British love of dogs, these animals play an important part in the Canon. Dogs are very often used in Doyle's work, as well as horses which were, however, the main mean of transport in that period.

When Holmes was young, a dog bit him (GLOR); the event gave rise to his friendship with Victor Trevor, the dog's master. Maybe, thanks to this coincidence, Holmes could keep up positive relations with dogs. In fact, whenever Watson compares him with a bloodhound on the right track the detective never feels offended.

In STUD, Watson undertook the pitiful task of killing Mrs. Hudson's dying dog. Holmes contributed in giving him a poisoned pill and the animal's death became an important step to get the solution of the case he was investigating.

Holmes, who asserted his love of dogs in SHOS, made use of Toby (in SIGN) with great satisfaction and admiration in a pursuit that led him to the conclusive track. Holmes said that Toby had a very good nose and that he preferred him to the police. Watson described him as a cross between a spaniel and a mongrel and one can likely infer from his description that Toby might have been the offspring of 1) a Springer spaniel for the colour of his coat and the length of his ears,

2) a Sussex spaniel for his typical swinging going and his incessant barking on the track, 3) a Foxhound for his tireless energy on tracks and for his speed.

Later, Holmes made use of another dog: his name was Pompei, a cross between a beagle and a foxhound. He had taken him at the Trinity College of Cambridge, on Overton's suggestion.

Holmes's lasting interest in dogs led him to tell, in CREE, that he was thinking to write a monograph about the use of dogs in the art of detection.

Actually, Holmes got useful clues to the solution of several cases by studying dogs' behaviour, e.g. the paralysis of Carlo, the spaniel, poisoned in SUSS; the unusual silence of the watchdog who did not bark in SILV; the disappearance of Dr. Mortimer's little spaniel in HOUN; the strange death of McPherson's Airedale in the same place where his master had died (LION); the weird behaviour of the dog in SHOS snarling and barking against his presumed master and the odd reaction of Roy, Prof. Presbury's faithful Alsatian, who attacked his master in CREE.

There are also fierce dogs such as Carlo, the terrifying mastiff in COPP; Dr. Amstrong's dog set on Holmes in MISS; Milverton's watchdog (CHAS), and chiefly the deadly and fearful animal of The Hound of the Baskervilles (HOUN).

In Italy, this animal is often identified with a mastiff, though it is quite incorrect.

The dog at issue does not actually belong to any known breed. He can be rather seen as a new embodiment of an ancient myth, that is the Death's dog who, as John Fowles points out in his introduction to the book, has got the oldest pedigree of all dog breeds.

The fear of the "Black Dog" can be found in every culture and civilization, from the ancient Egyptians to the Mesolithic Northern populations. It is an ancestral fear, with no reference to a special kind of dog.

Anyway, Watson, recollecting the moment when he could watch the animal's corpse closely, describes him as a sort of half-mastiff and half-bloodhound.

Therefore, the mastiff breed is somehow involved, but it is not more remarkable than the other one. Defining that dog as a "mastiff" is as incorrect as calling him a "bloodhound".

In fact Stapleton, who brought the dog to Dartmoor, was a naturalist and knew the researches on crossbreeds which were flourishing in those years and were going to drive to the selection and birth of our most interesting dog breeds. In the same period, for instance, while sir Laverack was selecting Setters, German researchers were selecting Alsatians and, in the U.K., the Bullmastiff was going to be created a few years later.

The dog at issue, in one sense, might be numbered among the attempts of realizing special crossbreeds, since he gathers all the features of the two most loved and ancient dog breeds of England.

It is likely that when Stapleton went to Ross & Mangles in Fulham Road he asked not only for the wildest and strongest dog, but also for the one endowed with the best nose.

On the one hand it was vital to the success of his plan that the dog could reach his quarry in the moor thanks to his nose (previously trained on one of the victim's old shoe); that is why the animal had to have bloodhound's blood.

On the other, once he had reached the victim he had to tear it to pieces instead of jumping and barking, as bloodhounds use to do. Thence the necessity of having mastiff's blood, too.

In short the hound of the Baskervilles was a kind of dog never seen before, a unique and unclassifiable crossbreed adding the nose, the coat and the appearance of a huge bloodhound (according to Paget's pictures) to the force and the wildness of a bulky mastiff.

It is finally noteworthy the odd "case" of the puppy that Watson mentions in STUD as his own.

This subject will be discussed in E. Solito's following article The Puppy's Matter: two confutations and a possible explanation.