An A–Z of Exceptional Dogs

An A–Z of Exceptional Dogs
Mikita Brottman

Previously published as The Great Grisby‘You cannot help but fall in love with Grisby’ Jeffrey MassonIn this charming bestiary of exceptional dogs, Mikita Brottman reflects on the role dogs play in our world, explored through her relationship with her dog Grisby and the dogs of great writers and artists from literature, lore, and life.While gradually unveiling her eight-year love affair with her French bulldog, Grisby, Mikita Brottman ruminates on the singular bond between dogs and humans. Why do prevailing attitudes warn us against loving our pet “too much”? Is her relationship with Grisby nourishing or dysfunctional, commonplace or unique? Challenging the assumption that there’s something repressed and neurotic about those deeply connected to a dog, she turns her keen eye on the many ways in which dog is the mirror of man.The Great Grisby is organized into twenty-six alphabetically arranged chapters, each devoted to a particular human-canine union drawn from history, art, philosophy, or literature. Here is Picasso’s dachshund Lump; Freud’s chow Yofi; Bill Sikes’s mutt Bull’s Eye in Oliver Twist; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s spaniel Flush, whose biography was penned by Virginia Woolf. There are royal dogs, like Prince Albert’s greyhound Eos, and dogs cherished by authors, like Thomas Hardy’s fox terrier, Wessex. Brottman’s own beloved Grisby serves as an envoy for sniffing out these remarkable companions.Quirky and delightful, and peppered with incisive personal reflections and back-and-white sketches portraying a different dog and its owner, The Great Grisby reveals how much dogs have to teach us about empathy, happiness, love—and what it means to be human.

An A–Z of Exceptional Dogs

Mikita Brottman

Copyright (#u0b32d8f8-4df1-577f-a08b-badef922da4b)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://WilliamCollinsBooks.com)

This eBook edition published by William Collins in 2014

First published in Great Britain as The Great Grisby: Two Thousand Years of Exceptional Dogs by William Collins in 2014

First published in the United States by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Mikita Brottman

Cover photograph © Tim Platt/Getty Images

Illustrations by Davina “Psamophis” Falcão

Mikita Brottman asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007548057

Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007548064

Version: 2015-09-08

A dog starv’d at his master’s gate

Predicts the ruin of the state.

—WILLIAM BLAKE,

“Auguries of Innocence” (1803)

Contents

Cover (#u2f8ed699-caa1-5489-bfca-ea3f25f63c16)

Title Page (#u5d5666d5-ae90-57c3-990e-84775c6179b6)

Copyright

Epigraph (#u317af4b5-9480-5e88-9e8d-ac7fce7652b3)

Introduction

1. Atma

2. Bull’s-eye

3. Caesar III

4. Douchka

5. Eos

6. Flush

7. Giallo

8. Hachikō

9. Issa

10. Jip

11. Kashtanka

12. Lump

13. Mathe

14. Nero

15. Ortipo

16. Peritas

17. Quinine

18. Robber