part0042

Pets and people frequently clash in urban legends, usually with some resulting embarrassment or danger to one or the other. This is illustrated in several of the pet legends that I have discussed or mentioned already.

Another such dog story that has circulated for years centers on a question of etiquette. Although I have heard it as an anonymous friend-of-a-friend story, this comic gem seems to have literary origins. I call the story “Not My Dog,” which gives the plot away, but what the heck.

A woman is invited to call at the home of a woman who is wealthier than she is (or, in variations, older or socially superior). From the moment she is invited, the caller is unsure about how to behave—how to sit, how to take tea, etc. And matters are made worse when the time of the visit arrives. A large, lively, dirty beast of a dog is sitting in the front yard, and when the hostess welcomes the caller into the house, the dog follows her inside. While the caller tries to respect the social amenities, that darn dog does not. It tracks mud about the room, sniffs the cookies, and paws the furniture. The caller makes small talk, but the conversation becomes strained. Still, both parties keep a stiff upper lip, observing proper etiquette.

Finally the visit comes to an end. As the caller rises to leave, the hostess, with one eye on the wreckage, remarks icily, “And don’t forget to take your dog!”

Once, when I retold that story at home, a small child (one of my daughters) cried out: “That same story is in one of my Emily books!”

Indeed, it is. Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables and other popular children’s books, wrote three novels about the life and adventures of a girl named Emily Starr. In the third book, Emily Climbs , published in 1924, we find the “Not My Dog” story in Chapter 22.

Young Emily calls on Miss Janet Royal, a “brilliant, successful woman,” whose very name projects an aristocratic bearing. When the girl arrives for the visit, a large muddy dog, thought by Emily to be Miss Royal’s pet chow Chu-Chin, follows her into the elegant parlor of the house and makes an awful mess.

Only when the embarrassed Emily is ready to depart from the uncomfortable interview does she learn that this is not her hostess’s dog, which had been locked up in the bedroom to prevent him from chasing a cat. Miss Royal, of course, had assumed that the dog is Emily’s. And Emily simply had no idea what a chow dog looks like.

The story may have been a traditional one on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where Montgomery grew up and set most of her fiction. Or it may have become a folktale only later, as a result of its appearance in Emily Climbs , which has been read by countless children over the years. Either way, it’s now an urban legend.

Another version of “Not My Dog” surfaced recently in Ed Regis’s book Who Got Einstein’s Office? Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1987, p. 110). This time the participants are the famous mathematicians John von Neumann and Julian Bigelow.

In 1946, Bigelow, according to his quoted account, came to Princeton to meet von Neuman. Arriving late, Bigelow was followed into von Neumann’s elegant house by a frisky Great Dane, presumably his host’s pet. The dog roamed the house during the interview, at the conclusion of which von Neumann politely asked Bigelow whether he always brought his dog along. “But of course, it wasn’t my dog,” Bigelow is quoted, “and it wasn’t his either.” So now we have a variation on the punchline.

Could it be that these eminent scientists—or perhaps author Ed Regis—were readers of Emily Climbs? Or is this particular problem of doggy etiquette so common that independent folk stories have sprung up?

A final mystery: Several readers clipped the Smithsonian magazine review (February 1988) of Who Got Einstein’s Office in which the dog episode was summarized, sending it to me with notes indicating that they had within the past year heard Burt Reynolds tell virtually the same story to Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.” Reynolds, according to my readers, claimed that he himself was the visitor.