100 Dogs Who Changed Civilization (2 page)

Sputnik II
was launched with Laika on board on November 3, 1957, in a worldwide blaze of publicity. Placing the first living being in orbit was trumpeted by the Soviets as a major achievement. However, in later years it was revealed to be not quite as groundbreaking as originally portrayed.

For decades the Russians claimed that Laika survived for days in orbit before finally succumbing to a malfunction in her life-support system. The truth wasn't revealed until forty-five years after her historic flight. In 2002, Russian scientists who had worked on the program admitted that the poor dog had died only hours into the mission, probably from fright. Her capsule remained in orbit until April 14, 1958, when it reentered the atmosphere and burned up.

Thankfully, of the thirteen Russian space dogs sent into orbit over the ensuing decade, Laika was
the only one who couldn't be retrieved. But in the eyes of dog owners worldwide, that was one too many. “The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it,” said Soviet-era rocket scientist Oleg Gazenko decades after the project. “We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.”

It's some small consolation that today Laika is lionized for her sacrifice. She's been featured in endless books and movies and emblazoned on postage stamps around the world. But perhaps the most fitting testament is her place on Moscow's gigantic Monument to the Conquerors of Space. In the spirit of collectivism, the massive bas-relief at its base contains no images of specific cosmonauts
or scientists involved in the program. The only explorer who earned a personal portrait is Laika, shown inside the capsule that would become her final resting place.

Purebred dogs are considered the aristocracy of the canine world. But just as with human nobility, some of the most vaunted names arise from humble beginnings.

It's hard to imagine a humbler start than that of the Boykin spaniel, a medium-sized hunting dog that's widely known in the American South. Incredibly, the breed can be traced back to a single stray who went by the not-very-aristocratic name of Dumpy. Alexander L. White found the poor, bedraggled creature in 1911, loitering outside a church in Spartanburg, South Carolina. White took him home, fed and bathed him, and discovered during numerous hunting trips that Dumpy had the makings of an excellent retriever. His friend, dog trainer Whit Boykin, was likewise impressed. White turned the churchyard refugee over to Boykin, who crossed him with other promising hunting dogs.

Eventually, after much fine-tuning, Dumpy's progeny became the elegant-looking Boykin spaniels seen at dog shows today. The Boykin is even recognized as the state dog of South Carolina—quite a step up for the sons and daughters of a stray mutt.

Almost every dog who has ever visited the earth's arctic regions did so while pulling a sled. But that's not the case for an intrepid fox terrier named Titina. She arrived at the North Pole in relative comfort aboard an airship.

The little dog started life as a starving stray on the streets of Rome. But one night in 1925, she had the good fortune of running into Italian dirigible pioneer Umberto Nobile. From then on, Nobile and Titina (she was named after an Italian song) were inseparable. They shared danger, adventure, and, finally, disgrace.

The two were so close that in 1926 Nobile made the unusual, even ill-advised, decision to take his ten-pound (5 kg) mascot with him on a historic attempt to fly an airship of his own design over the North Pole. The tiny Titina didn't take up much space, but as the expedition's commander, the famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, pointed out in the most blunt and angry terms, conditions were so cramped on board that the sixteen-man crew of the airship
Norge
didn't even have space to sit down. The only individual who enjoyed that luxury was Titina, who nested on a pile of supplies.

Her trip over the pole made the diminutive dog a media darling. Dispatches from the expedition detailed everything from her living conditions to what she wore (a red woolen jersey). Her biography even appeared in the
New York Times
. After the flight she went on a world tour with Nobile, meeting everyone from Rudolph Valentino to Benito Mussolini. The great airman so loved his dog that he wouldn't allow his picture to be taken without her.

But Titina was destined to share Nobile's bad times as well. On May 25, 1928, during another polar expedition, Nobile's airship
Italia
crashed in the midst of a storm, killing several crew members. The small group of survivors, including Nobile and Titina, salvaged what they could from the wreck and hunkered down on the ice, awaiting rescue.

A month passed before the party was found by a Swedish search plane. It was then that Nobile made the decision that destroyed his reputation. Told that the pilot had been ordered to pick up no one but him, he boarded the plane with his dog and left the rest of his crew behind. As fate would have it, the aircraft crashed when it attempted a second rescue run. The remaining survivors, some of them badly wounded, had to spend many additional weeks on the ice before they were picked up.

Nobile was excoriated by the press for his actions, particularly in Italy, where his success—and his open feuds with the Fascist government—had
made him many enemies in Mussolini's regime. Wrecking the
Italia
and killing so many of his crew seemed bad enough, but abandoning them on the ice, no matter what he'd been told by the pilot of the rescue plane, was even worse. And choosing to take his dog added the final, aggravating exclamation point.

The man who conquered the pole by air was thoroughly disgraced. But there was some consolation, at least. He would outlive Mussolini, and see his name cleared—at least officially—of any misdoing by a 1945 Italian Air Force inquiry. He was even returned to the rank of major general. And, of course, even in his darkest days, he never lost the love and solace of Titina. From the bitter cold arctic to the bitterness of public disrepute, she never left his side.

One of the world's greatest cultural treasures is, quite literally, located in a hole in the ground. And it might have remained there, undiscovered, to this very day, were it not for the timely misstep of one French dog.

It happened near the village of Montignac, France. On September 12, 1940, four boys were out searching for treasure allegedly buried in a secret tunnel in the surrounding countryside. The kids had no luck, but their dog, Robot, did. He discovered (some accounts say he fell into and had to be rescued from) a dark hole that his human companions were sure led to untold riches.

They had no idea how right they were. It was the entrance to the now world-famous Cave of Lascaux, an underground complex filled with beautiful and nearly pristine cave paintings, all of them more—perhaps much more—than ten thousand years old. Ironically, Robot's discovery was almost destroyed by the attention it received. The heat and high humidity created by thousands of daily visitors started to damage the cave paintings, and Lascaux had to be closed to the public in 1963.

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychotherapy, was a card-carrying dog person. He loved them so much that in later years, on his birthday, his daughter Anna would dress up the family pets in party hats. They had their own chairs at the table and would celebrate and partake of birthday cake alongside the human members of Freud's clan.

He had a particular fondness for chow chows, of which he owned several. Of these, the most important was Jo-Fi. The great psychoanalyst believed dogs were excellent judges of character and that they helped put people at ease. For this reason, he allowed Jo-Fi to sit in on patient interviews. If someone was calm and at peace, the dog would lie down relatively near him or her; if someone was full of hidden tension, Jo-Fi would keep his distance.

But that wasn't the dog's only, or even most useful, talent. Jo-Fi could also unerringly tell when a session was up. After fifty minutes had passed, the big chow would get up, stretch, and head for the office door. Thus Freud always knew, without crassly glancing at his watch, when it was time to usher a patient out the door.