Going Happily to the Dogs

Pictured are three undated favorites from our archives. Do you recognize any of these men by their dogs? SJ Historical Society photos

Feb­ru­ary is a month known for two hol­i­days, Valentine’s Day and Pres­i­dents’ Day. Since we don’t have any pho­tos of vis­it­ing U.S. Pres­i­dents in our archives, we’re going with Valentine’s Day for this month’s col­umn; just not in the tra­di­tion­al sense. Although it’s a hol­i­day for sweet­hearts and friend­ship, this time in true island style, we salute “man’s best friend.”

Island dogs have always been pop­u­lar here, and many have achieved a cer­tain local celebri­ty sta­tus. Many of us will remem­ber Dodie Gann’s Shad­ow or Joan May’s Free­way. Our dogs in gen­er­al seem to be a cut above your basic fur­ry com­pan­ion, if you ask us. An island vis­i­tor was once over­heard to exclaim while walk­ing past well-behaved dogs in town, “Even the dogs are smarter here!”

Two oth­er canine-relat­ed obser­vances occur this month. Chi­nese New Year begins Feb­ru­ary 16 and 2018 is the Year of the Dog. World Spay Day is Feb­ru­ary 27, remind­ing us that spay­ing and neu­ter­ing helps pre­vent unwant­ed dogs (and cats) from liv­ing unhealthy lives of aban­don­ment on the streets or in the wild.

Many of our canine fam­i­ly mem­bers have been includ­ed in for­mal stu­dio por­traits and still oth­ers into pho­to albums, some of which have made their way into our col­lec­tion of pho­tos at the His­tor­i­cal Muse­um. For the cat lovers read­ing this, please be assured we love them, too. It’s just that cats have not his­tor­i­cal­ly posed for pho­tos as often. If you have a notable island cat that deserves a place in island his­to­ry, shoot a pic­ture our way. We don’t think the dogs will mind.

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