Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1881 — Fashionable Dogs. [ARTICLE]

Fashionable Dogs.

“The fashion in dogs,” said Mr. Dan Foster, the fancier, to a New York Sun reporter, “changes from year to year, the same as in women’s dresses. I should name as the most fashionable dogs at this time the rough-coated St. Bernard aud the English pug. The St. Bernard dogs are rare, but there is a demand for them reaching as far as Colorado. The pups are worth from SSO to SI,OOO. The English pug is a dog that went and came. He has undergone vicissitudes, he has. Near a hundred years ago there wasn’t a fashionable lady’s coach in England that didn’t have his singularly ugly muzzle poking out of it. He had been brought over by a sailor from Japan. The first strain imported was very black, and went to Lord Willoughby; the secoud, lighter, was brought over by the same sailor, and went to Mr. Morrison. By these names the two strains of pugs are still known. Ten years ago they were almost unknown here; now, fat and sleek, they may be seen by the score waddling with ladies in Broadway and looking out of curtained windows in Fifth avenue. They cost from $25 to S2OO each. Col. Sellers bought one, a male, at the bench show some years ago aud made the mistake of calling it Clytemnestra. The pug has no voice. He is worthy on account of his ugliness aud affection. “Then, for a scarce and fashionable dog, I should name next the King Charles spaniel. He first came to England as a present to Charles 11. from King Charles of Spain. I pretend to have a supply of dogs, but I own only a single pair of these, which I keep for breeding purposes. The male weighs five pounds and the female seven pounds. The animal is black and tan in color, and is worth from SIOO to S2OO. “Then comes the small black and tan, a common lady’s pet, with a bark so big that it shakes him all over; he is worth from $25 to $125, according to his size and marking. The small bull and terrier is a pet of fashionable men. He “pure white, and is worth from SSO to $250. And the Japanese pug is a remarkably fashionable dog. He rides in carriages that have coats of arms on their panels. He is rough coated, and is black and white or yellow and white, and he costs $l5O and 200. “Did you ever,” continued the fancier, relapsing into the region of soul, “see a Scotch colly? He is as soft and beautiful as a dream. He’s got eyes like a maiden in love. He is very rare in America. Mr. Joe Jefferson, the actor, had one, and I presume has him now, that was a beauty. A colly would cost from SSO to S3OO. Then, I shall name, to close the list, the Italian greyhound, which is worth from $25 to $150.” A baby is not a very large thing—- “ only a baby,” says the poet—and yet this inconsequential package of tender humanity will, with scarcely an apparent effort, drown the heavy breathings of a mighty engine, outbellow the raging ocean, banish sleep from two decks of a steamboat, and chain the attention of a thousand sleepy paegengers for &eyen consecutive hours.