A Dog’s Age

Buster Keaton's 1923 silent film The Three Ages — a send-up of D.W. Griffith's epic Intolerance, the grandaddy of all message films — ends on a visionary note.

Like its satirical target, The Three Ages intercuts between three stories of inidividuals struggling against the forces of darkness in three historical epochs. This narrative scheme allows Keaton to play a caveman, a roman centurion, and Los Angeles jazz-ager.

After all three heroes have triumphed over their adversaries and then gotten the girl (the fetching Margaret Leahy as cavewoman, Etruscan beauty, and L.A. gal), we come to the obligatory happy ending scenes, one for each story. The caveman is shown with his cavewoman surrounded by a huge brood of cavekids in their furs; the roman and his wife have also reproduced, though not quite as prolifically.

Then comes the memorable scene that closes the film. The camera looks down a sidewalk running in front of a seemingly endless row of stucco bungalows. No people are visible. Then Keaton appears, walking arm in arm with a stylish flapper woman down the path from one of the bungalows. As the pair turns down the sidewalk and strolls away from the camera, their tiny dog comes scampering after them. Childless yes, dogless no.

The film's last image brilliantly presages the the canine beast's further rise to social and political preeminence on the American continent.

Even the father of this country, George Washington, was a dog lover, and, more importantly, could be counted on to honor the sanctity of the bounds between a man and his truest possible friend.

Writing from his headquarters at Perkiomen, Pennsylvania, two days after the Battle of Germantown, in October of 1777, Washington apparently sent the following message to General William Howe, who remained at Germantown:

“General Washington's compliments to General Howe. He does himself the pleasure to return him a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the Collar appears to belong to General Howe.”

The breed of the animal is unknown, though several scholars suggest it was an English bull.

The later history of the canine animal in politics and war is no less clear in laying out the vital role of the dog in the American enterprise: from Manifest Destiny to the Battle of the Bulge.

When not beating down the Colombians with his Big Stick, Teddy Roosevelt would often often let his fox terrier, Jack Dog, chew on it.

Like the Mighty Editor of the AVA, General Patton was a pit bull man. He bought his first just after World War I for his daughters, Beatrice and Ruth Ellen, and named him Tank. Although Tank turned out to be stone deaf, the girls loved him and called him by thumping on the floor. In spite of his deafness, Tank somehow always knew when Patton was arriving home and met him at the front door.

The most famous bull terrier owned by Patton was purchased in March of 1944. He was named Willie, short for “William the Conqueror.” Patton wrote of the dog, “My bull pup…took to me like a duck to water. He is 15 months old, pure white except for a little lemin [sic] on his tail which to a cursory glance would seem to indicate that he had not used toilet paper.”

Willie wore jingle bells on his collar and had his own set of “dog tags.” He was rumored to be a prodigious lover, with even more offspring than the that legendary American doggy dynasty-maker, the Bush's Millie. By the next human Bush generation, Millie's progeny will be in half the state houses around America.

In the political realm the role of the dog is indeed hard to overestimate. Dick Nixon owed his political survival to the genial cocker spaniel, Checkers. The dog, who certainly must be regarded as one of the great anti-Communist crusaders of the Cold War, died in 1964, thus could not save Nixon from the Watergate crisis. (The iconic McCarthy Era pooch buried along with 50,000 other dogs, cats, chimpanzees and other non-humans in Long Island's Bide-a-Wee Pet Cemetery, a place of pilgrimage for Republican cocker spaniel owners.)

Nearly half-a-century after the Checkers' speech, the Clinton's bought their dog Buddy during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in a transparent attempt to deflect the public's attention from the carnal to the canine. Clinton's tactic was, as usual, finely-tuned to the American collective psychology, following as it did a well-known public relations equation: when moral questions arise buy a dog and be seen often with it, from Washington's bistros to the Newshour to the front page of the New York Times. Clinton owes something of his slithery escape from impeachment to the unsung, but no-less crucial, Buddy.

(By the way, if that pair of lecherous Northwest Senators Bob Packwood and Brock Adams had sought the advice of any of the leading DC canine political consultants they would now be respected figures in American political life.)

But perhaps even Buster Keaton could not have predicted the hegemony over social life our four-legged “friends” would achieve. Indeed, a stroll around any American city will quickly reveal that this land is Dog's Land, from sea to shining sea.

In New York City 300 life-sized statues of dogs have been going up this summer in public spaces. The DogNY project, sponsored by the American Kennel Club and proceeding with the full-endorsement of the the mayor and council, is meant to draw attention to the heroic rescue dogs of 9/11.

Many of these statues will be erected in the city's parks, another good place to get an idea of the primacy of the canine species in the social landscape of our time.

On a recent Sunday morning I stolled into Madison Square Park around 8:30. At this extremely early weekend hour for New Yorker's, the park was deserted, except for one corner of it which was teeming with activity. I walked over to see what was going on.

In a triangular portion of the park along Broadway is something called “Gemmy's Run,” an enclosed, sandy lot with various obstacles. On this Sunday morning, two dozen dog owners were leaning against the fence, sipping coffee from titanium carafes, engaging in dog-talk with the other dog owners, devotedly watching their beloved animals frolic about. A hundred yards away the brightly colored playground was completely empty.

I've always thought a civilization's approach to public sanitation gives one the clearest idea about its core values, not to mention its likelihood of further survival. In Gemmy's Run the dogs shat freely, whereas I had to haul my kids over to the Dunkin' Donuts and spring for a maple bar in order to have a pot to piss in for my wee'uns.

From its statuary to its parks: New York is Dog Capital of the World.

One could go on with all this, cataloging these and other absurdities, from the special dog treadmills and lap pools to be found in upscale doggy gyms, to the joint custody agreements so typical of the dogs of human divorce, to the bizarre reality of doggy dialysis and kidney transplants, now at an all time high even as the legions of the human uninsured burgeon.

Instead, though, I'll end with a memorable tableau from a recent wedding I provided the music for. The groom and his groomsmen entered at the front of the church, as the bridesmaids in extremely fuchsia gowns processed. After these lovelies had all made their way to their spots, the congregation stood as the bride had her moment.

Then the real gasps of delight and wonder emanated from the crowd: the ring-bearer was to be seen coming down the aisle, gleaming white and frizzed, with blue silk trimmings and a pouch around the neck. A giant poodle named Olga basked in the adulation of the hundreds.

Then within ten feet of the bridal couple, the haughty dog lifted its leg and peed all over the runner.