An A–Z of Exceptional Dogs

I can’t speak on behalf of other dog owners (or their dogs), but I suspect I’ve given Grisby this kind of personality as a way of connecting my adult and childhood selves. He is, in other words, a “transitional object”—a phrase coined by the child psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott to mean a personal possession, like a teddy bear or security blanket, that helps the child feel safe away from home. Transitional objects are not limited to childhood. Adults, too, need things that remind them of their private worlds: personal photographs used as screen savers, lucky charms, religious icons, sports mascots—anything with a stable meaning that can avert loneliness, mediating between the familiar world of home and the impersonal workplace or public realm.

Dogs make very handy transitional objects because we can use them as outlets for all kinds of different emotions. In my case, Grisby forms a bridge between my inner life and the “real world” out there, toward which I’m increasingly ambivalent. On the one hand, I want to function successfully as an adult in the wider world; on the other hand, I want to stay at home, regress to infancy, and keep the outside world at bay. It’s always easier to make this difficult transition with a friendly bulldog by my side.

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HACHIKŌ (#ulink_b7fda12f-2910-583f-9b32-b7a410924660)

HIDESABURŌ UENO, A professor of agricultural science at Tokyo Imperial University, always took the four o’clock train home from work, and every day, his dog, Hachikō, would be waiting for him on the platform at Shibuya Station. When Professor Ueno died of a cerebral hemorrhage in May 1925, in the middle of a lecture, his gardener, who inherited his house in the Kobayashi district, also adopted Hachikō, and for the next ten years, this golden-brown Akita would return to Shibuya Station every day to meet the four o’clock train, hoping to see his beloved master again. In 1935, Hachikō’s body was found in a Tokyo street. His remains were stuffed, mounted, and put on display in Japan’s National Science Museum. A bronze statue of the famous dog stands outside Shibuya Station to this day, and he also has his own memorial by the side of his master’s grave in Aoyama cemetery.

Interestingly, Hachikō isn’t the only dog whose statue oversees a railway station. In 2007, a memorial was erected at the Mendeleyevskaya station on the Moscow Metro in honor of Malchik, a stray mutt who lived there for about three years, becoming popular with commuters and Metro workers. Malchik claimed the station as his territory, protecting travelers from drunks, the homeless, and other stray dogs. In 2001, after getting into an altercation with a bull terrier, Malchik was stabbed to death by the other dog’s owner, a psychiatric patient with a long history of cruelty to animals.

Heroic dogs like Malchik and Hachikō continue to appeal, growing even more famous and beloved as time goes by. Hachikō has been the subject of two children’s books and two movies, the more recent of which—Hachi: A Dog’s Tale—starred Richard Gere as the Professor Ueno figure. In 1994, millions of radio listeners tuned in to Nippon Cultural Broadcasting to hear a newly restored recording of Hachikō’s bark, and in 2012, enthusiasts queued for hours to see an exhibition of rare photographs from the dog’s life. To his fans, Hachikō was unique, perhaps even miraculous in his devotion. Yet to those with a broader view, Hachikō’s story is simply the most recent variant of an ancient and widespread folktale motif: the Faithful Hound.