Top 10s Monumental Dogs

Top 10s Monumental Dogs!

Look carefully and you will see dogs captured for posterity
everywhere, says Karen Bush.

1- The best known of all doggy statues is probably Greyfriars Bobby. The
the story of the faithful Skye Terrier, who kept watch over his master’s grave
for 14 years, so touched the heart of Baroness Angela Georgina
Burdett-Coutts that she erected a memorial granite fountain with a statue
on top. Unveiled in 1873, Edinburgh’s smallest listed building has become
a tourist attraction and, over the years, so many have rubbed Bobby’s nose for
luck that he needed a nose job to repair the damage! Twelve months later the
restoration was wearing off, leading to an appeal to leave his nose alone.

2- Another famous Skye Terrier can be spotted at Colinton Parish Church near Edinburgh. Author and poet Robert Louis Stevenson loved dogs,
and Cuillin was his constant childhood companion. Sculptor Alan Herriot captured the magic of many happy hours spent together, portraying RLS sitting on a tree stump scribbling in a notebook — but it is Cuillin who really has his attention.

4- The 18th-century painter, engraver, and satirist William Hogarth,
nicknamed the ‘Painter Pug’, was famous for his love of the breed. Pugs
were often included in his works, with his favorite, Trump, featuring in 1745
self-portrait ‘The Painter and His Pug’. In 1741, Trump was sculpted in terracotta by Louis-François Roubiliac, and he was also reproduced in Chelsea porcelain and as black basalt ware by Wedgwood. But when a statue of Hogarth sculpted by Jim
Mathieson was commissioned in 2001, the little dog very nearly (and unimaginable)
wasn’t included. At the last minute, an extra £10,000 was raised to enable him to be modeled and cast in time to join the master who adored him, on the plinth near their London house.

5- There are many examples of dogs on medieval tombs, but only one who has a name. Half hid among her skirts, Terri (or possibly Cerri)
lies at the feet of Dame Alice Cassey at the 14th-century family tomb in the
Saxon church of St Mary’s at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire. It is the only known
example of a named animal on funerary brass, and probably the oldest pet
memorial in England.

6- Outrage and an upsurge of popular support for the British anti-vivisectionist movement followed allegations of inhumane and illegal experimentation on a brown terrier at University College London.
A Brown Dog statue, sculpted by Joseph Whitehead, was erected in Battersea,
featuring a bronze statue of the terrier, and carrying a plaque naming and shaming UCL. It had to be assigned round-the-clock police protection from incensed medical students, sparking off a series of Brown Dog riots, and leading to questions being asked in Parliament about the expense of such protection.
Despite injunctions and petitions to save it, in 1910 the statue was ripped down under cover of night and destroyed. In 1985, the terrier returned when a new statue by Nicola Hicks, modeled on her own terrier, Brock, was erected.

7- If you find yourself near Belgrave Square in London, pause for
a moment to admire the two handsome dogs lounging at the feet of
Sir Robert Grosvenor, a nod to the Talbot Hounds which take a prominent place on the family coat of arms. Along with Greyhounds, they are the only breed of hound used in English heraldry. More Talbot Hounds can be found in Trevelyan
Square, Leeds, where four of them, holding fountain spigots in their mouths,
support a large stone bowl.

8- While taking a stroll in the grounds of  Antrim Castle in 1607, the new bride of Sir Hugh Clotworthy was attacked by a wolf. A mysterious
Wolfhound came to Lady Marian’s rescue and killed the wolf, but vanished again after she had tended his wounds.
One dark and stormy evening some years later, the Wolfhound reappeared;
standing on the battlements, his howling raised the alarm that the castle was
under attack. With the enemy defeated, as dawn lit the sky, the Wolfhound was
transformed into stone, although some say that the hound died helping defend
the castle and Sir Hugh had a statue made in his honor. Superstition says that
should the statue ever be moved from the castle grounds, disaster will follow, so
although the castle no longer stands, the Wolfhound continues to keep his watch in
the castle gardens.

9- Over 60 statues dedicated to Scottish poet Robert Burns exist worldwide, 15 of them in Scotland, but, scandalously, not all of them
feature his favorite dog Luath, from whom he was said to be inseparable. When the collie tripped up Jean Armour, Burns’ future wife, at a wedding, it gave the poet the courage to speak to the woman who was to become the other love of his life. Happily, the ‘gash and faithful’ tyke’ can be admired sitting at the feet of the poet in Dumfries town center.

10- Edinburgh and its environs do seem particularly blessed
with sculptures of famous canines: keeping novelist Sir Walter Scott
company on the world’s second largest monument to a writer is his beloved
Deerhound, Maida. Also featuring on the monument is a Dandie Dinmont Terrier — the breed named after a fictional character in one of Scott’s novels.