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.
Arguably, the best-known example of this theme may be found in the famous Welsh story of the hero Llewellyn and his loyal hound, Gelert. In this legend, Llewellyn returns from hunting to discover his baby missing, the cradle overturned, and blood around the mouth of his dog. In a rage, the hero draws his sword and stabs Gelert. The dog’s expiring whimper wakes the baby, who’s lying unharmed under the cradle along with a dead wolf, killed by the loyal Gelert. Overcome with remorse, Llewellyn buries the dog with great ceremony, yet the sound of his faithful dog’s dying whimper haunts the impulsive hero from that day forth.
A tale that remains current in so many different times and cultures must speak to a universal truth. Dogs are certainly faithful creatures, perfectly capable of expressing grief for a lost companion, spending time beside the dead body of a beloved friend, and finding their way home despite tremendous obstacles. Nevertheless, the primary instinct of a healthy dog—like that of all healthy creatures, including humans—is self-preservation, and on further investigation, these miraculous hounds often prove rather less marvelous than they first appear.
The nineteenth-century counterpart of Hachikō was Greyfriars Bobby, a humble little Scottish terrier who lived in the Greyfriars burial ground in Edinburgh, allegedly unwilling to leave his master’s grave. In his book Greyfriars Bobby: The Most Faithful Dog in the World, author Jan Bondeson proves there were actually two different dogs going under Bobby’s name, both ordinary mongrels who made their home in the burial ground, eating leftovers provided by a local restaurateur. Bobby, explains Bondeson, was simply the latest in a series of now-forgotten cemetery dogs, including Médor, Dog of the Louvre; the Dog of Montparnasse; and the Dog of the Innocents. Like Greyfriars Bobby, these turned out on closer inspection to be “composite” dogs, strays that unconsciously took advantage of the public’s willingness to bring them scraps, helping—as they believed—to sustain these loyal creatures in their lonely vigils.
In the case of Hachikō, the dog seems to have been feeding—quite literally—on his own publicity. Once he became a regular visitor to Shibuya Station, people started to spread the word. The dog’s story was reported in the local paper, and commuters who passed through Shibuya began to look forward to seeing Hachikō, saving him leftovers from lunch. Since he spent less than two years meeting Professor Ueno at Shibuya and another eight years repeating the behavior, it seems fair to suggest the dog’s daily trip to the station may have been motivated less by steadfastness than by the anticipation of regular snacks.
The universal truth to which all these stories speak is not that of the dog’s miraculous fidelity but rather our need to believe in it. Dogs like Hachikō are symbols of canine commitment, affirming our confidence not only that dogs are capable of intense devotion but also that we are worthy of inspiring it. Yet while there’s something marvelous about the apparent dedication of these long-suffering dogs, it can also seem unbearably poignant. I was a child of seven or eight when I first heard the tale of Llewellyn and Gelert from my grandfather, and it upset me so much I had to make a conscious effort to forget it; I didn’t want to carry around such a terrible story in my head. When I think about the tale now, however, my anxiety takes refuge in its cracks and flaws. What kind of wolf is small enough to be hidden by an overturned cradle? Wouldn’t Llewellyn look for his missing baby before jumping to conclusions? And where was Mrs. Llewellyn?
Some people feel uncomfortable with the emotional burden placed on them by devotion of such magnitude. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke loved animals but avoided dogs because, he claimed, they required too much from him. Their utter dependence on human beings was too painful for him to bear. “Why did dogs make one want to cry? There was something so quiet and hopeless about their sympathy,” wonders the protagonist of Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, when she observes Jasper, one of her husband’s spaniels, “knowing something was wrong, as dogs always do.” Such moments bring us so readily to tears, I suggest, because they’re evocative of primal emotion. They provide a screen onto which we can’t help projecting memories of a time in our lives when we ourselves were most doglike.
As babies, we, too, were once full of inexpressible emotion and inarticulate yearnings. In Pack of Two, author Caroline Knapp argues that, with our dogs, we develop a bond similar to the magical, once-in-a-lifetime connection we once experienced with our mothers. “I sit outside with Lucille day after day,” writes Knapp, “and I feel that torrent of emotion—joy and delight and surprise along with self-doubt and anxiety and confusion—and I think: This is love, pure but not simple.” Around Lucille, Knapp can’t help indulging in projection. As she explains, she unconsciously ascribes to Lucille her own thoughts, feelings, and desires, often those she finds difficult to acknowledge.
Pets—just like dolls, cuddly toys, babies, and small children—are especially suitable for projection since they’re unable to speak or let us know their feelings in any detailed way, which is why they tend to arouse our fierce love and protective instincts. Bulldogs and other flat-faced dogs may invite more projection than other breeds because their faces are so human, with the eyes at the front of the head rather than the sides. This gives them another advantage, too. According to the anthrozoologist Hal Herzog, “breeds with short snouts like bulldogs, boxers and pugs understand human signals better than long-nosed breeds like Dobermans, dachshunds, and greyhounds,” owing to the frontal location of their eyes.
The projection of human emotions onto animals, rationalists would argue, is a kind of anthropomorphism, a cardinal sin among those who study animal behavior. Traditionally, scientists have criticized anyone who ascribes to animals “human” characteristics such as consciousness, desire, intelligence, goals, emotions, and preferences. Some go so far as to put words like “pain” and “hunger” in quotation marks, as though animals were incapable of feeling even these basic sensations. Outside the scientific domain, too, we sometimes use special terms when animals, not humans, are the subject—not “kill” but “cull,” not “babies” but “litter,” not “chop off” but “dock,” not “lovemaking” but “mating.” This makes me think of the philosopher René Descartes’s claim that animals are like machines, without feelings or emotions, and the sounds they make when “in pain” are simply the noises of a broken object, meaningless and automatic. While we may not know exactly what animals are feeling, and while it may not be wholly accurate to use the same terms of animals that we use of ourselves, in the absence of any knowledge to the contrary, surely it’s only right to assume they’re as sensitive as we are to pain, loss, isolation, and abandonment.
Perhaps, in the end, those most primal feelings are all I can really assume about Grisby. Maybe everything else I see in him—what I normally think of as his “personality,” his quirky charms, curious tastes, and funny habits—is projection. I claim I love him for his own special qualities, his unique Grisbiness, yet if I had to be more specific, all the characteristics I could mention would be human concepts: sweetness, playfulness, good humor, charm. This makes me wonder whether what I love about Grisby is the way he seems, as so many dog owners say of their pets, “almost human.” More to the point perhaps, is he really so sweet and loyal? Is he, in fact, eager to please me, or is he more interested, like the rest of us, in pleasing himself? If acting in a way that makes me happy means something good will happen to him—that he’ll get a treat, some crumbs, a kiss, a scratch behind the ears—then he’ll naturally be more likely to do it. I wonder: Is human “altruism” any different?
Curiously, from time to time, I’ll get a glimpse behind the veil of my own projection and see Grisby “as he really is”—a slightly overweight eight-year-old French bulldog, no more nor less. It happened once in training class, when from the sidelines, I observed him in a lineup of other dogs, and for a moment he was just a dog. Then, suddenly, he was my Grisby again. It was like looking at one of those optical illusions that seem to switch in your brain—you see a rabbit and not a duck; then suddenly all you can see is a duck, however hard you try.
This happens most clearly in the case of photographs since the camera records impressions with impersonal objectivity. I have one or two snapshots that capture something fleeting of the Grisby I know, but he really doesn’t photograph well. More accurately, he doesn’t photograph at all. Trying to capture my Grisby in a picture is like trying to photograph a ghost. What appears in the frame is merely the image of a dog—not my Grisby but the dog-in-the-world, the everyday animal. I’m also made aware of my projection whenever I get back from a trip and the creature that greets me isn’t my Grisby at all but just a brown-and-white French bulldog. For a moment, it’s as though I’m seeing him naked, exposed; then all of a sudden, the veil of projection falls, and all at once he’s my Grisby again. Colette Audry describes a similar experience when she rejoins her German shepherd Douchka after weeks apart. The dog, for a moment, seems less herself. “It struck me afterward that my pleasure at seeing her again had not been so great as I’d anticipated,” Audry observes. “Was that what she really looked like? My memory must have embellished her in retrospect.”
As psychologists have often testified, our feelings for our dogs can get tangled up with all kinds of issues and complexes involving residual jealousy, childhood traumas, the need for attention and affection, and feelings of rejection and despair. Caroline Knapp points out that “a person’s core sense of self—anxieties, insecurities, grandiosity, fantasies of self and other—can come bubbling up when it comes to controlling a dog, even in the smallest and seemingly most inconsequential ways.” For Knapp, these anxieties clustered around the question of her authority, which, she felt, was regularly challenged by her dog Lucille. “When the dog fails to come on command, when she ignores me,” observes Knapp, “I feel some well of fear rise up about being inadequate, unworthy of attention, out of control. I can hear a small voice inside: She doesn’t come when you call, because she knows you’re a wimp. She doesn’t come because she doesn’t love you. You’re a loser; you can’t even control your dog.”
My own particular anxieties seem to cluster around the issue of abandonment and neglect. I hate leaving Grisby at home. I especially hate leaving him alone; I take him almost everywhere I go, even to places where his presence is no doubt inconvenient for others: pubs and cafés, readings, lectures, movies, faculty meetings, cocktail parties. (Right now, as I type, he’s sitting beside me in a booth at a dog-friendly coffee shop.) Whenever I have to leave home without him, I get a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I imagine him sitting just inside the front door where I left him, waiting for me to return. I think of him wondering where I am, feeling alone and unloved. I know these anxieties are mine, not his. I know that if I disappeared tomorrow, Grisby would eventually get used to being with someone else. He might even be better off with someone who gives off fewer nervous vibrations. Perhaps this is what I’m truly afraid to face: that as long as he’s got food and company, he might barely notice I’ve gone.