Beech Tree News Network

The Study of Dogs

Recently, I was with my granddaughter, Sabria, while she was completing an online class assignment.  The subject was geography.  The last question in the group was: What is geography?  The first answer in the group of multiple-choice questions was: The study of dogs.  When Sabria read, “The study of dogs,” we both fell out laughing.  It has become our go-to ridiculous answer for every question related to subjects from math to language arts.

            There is a word for the study of dogs, but it’s not geography.  The word is cynology.  According to hounddogsrule.com, cynology “…denotes a serious zoological approach to the study of dogs, as well as by writers on canine subjects, dog breeders and trainers, and enthusiasts who informally study the dog; it is not a field of science…”

            I must have had dogs on my mind when I went to bed Saturday night, because I dreamed about a dog.  It was a dream about a large black dog in a new neighbor’s yard.  In the dream, I walked across the road to introduce myself, when the dog came bounding across the yard and latched onto my right arm.  As the dog growled and snarled at me, I remained still while I called out to a young girl sitting on a porch, telling her to please fetch her father to call the dog off.  She did.  He did. I was saved.

            When I awoke Sunday morning, I remembered the dream, and it reminded me of a podcast I listened to last spring on a site called LORE.  The podcast LORE, created by Aaron Mahnke, looks at historical events that morph into folklore.  One of the most chilling was the episode on the black dog.

            On the website, ancient-origins.net, it is observed that, “no other place in the world holds more legends or sighting of black dogs than the United Kingdom (birthplace of my ancestors).  Each region has its own version of the tale, with different names for the dog, such as Black Shuck, the Gurt dog, Padfoot, the Harry Hound, the Yeth Hound and the Grim. (Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story, “Hound of the Baskervilles,” draws heavily from the Black Dog folklore.)

            The story that fascinates me most, however, is the Black Dog story in the LORE podcast, “The Third Time” (episode 136).  The quote Mahnke uses is this: “The first time someone encounters the black dog is for joy, the second time for sorrow, and the third time means death.”  William Harry Pynchon was born in Connecticut in 1867.  As a young man, he attended Trinity College then continued his education at Harvard, studying geology.  In 1892, Harry travelled to the Hanging Hills area of Connecticut to study rock formations.  He noticed a black dog always following him at a distance.  The odd thing about the dog was that it never made a sound, and when Harry got up onto his horse to leave the area, the dog seems to have disappeared.  Three years later, Harry asked his friend, Herbert Marshall to accompany him to the Hanging Hills area.  As they were climbing to a summit, Harry mentioned the black dog.  Marshall said he had seen the dog two times before.  The two men reminded each other of the “three times” quote, laughing about the superstition as they continued on together.  Suddenly, on the peak of the summit, the black dog appeared.  Marshall pointed to the peak and whispered, “It is the third time.”  Immediately, the rock gave way under his feet, and Marshall fell several feet to his death.  When the townspeople went to retrieve the body, a black dog was standing over the corpse.

            Mahnke includes other stories in this particular podcast.  The account by Abraham Fleming in 1577, will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.  The story takes place in a parish church in Bungay, England.  The parishioners are gathered in the church when a violent storm comes up unexpectedly.  As the violent streaks of lightning flash, an enormous black dog appears, running up the aisle to the place where people are praying.  The dog kills three people then vanishes.  The same thing happens at a nearby church, where two people are killed, and others are burned.  The dog, called Black Shuck—shuck means demon—left scorch marks on the door.

            Mahnke concludes his podcast with the story of a discovery in 2013 at Leiston Abbey in England.  Excavators found the complete skeleton of a large animal.  The animal was seven feet long and was estimated to have weighed over 200 pounds.  It was the skeleton of a dog.

              Everyone who knows me knows how much I love dogs.  I don’t believe, however, that I will ever be the owner of a black dog.  My British ancestors haven’t had much luck with them.