Pets,People,and the Enduring ‘Dogaturgy’ of Nineteenth-Century Dog Dramas

Bo

On 8 May 2021, former U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Twitter that a beloved member of the family had died. ‘For more than a decade, Bo was a constant, gentle presence in our lives—happy to see us on our good days, our bad days, and everyday [sic] in between’, he wrote. ‘He was exactly what we needed and more than we ever expected. We will miss him dearly.’ The three-part thread included several photographs of the deceased: a black Portuguese water dog with white blaze and front paws. A gift given by U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy to the Obamas shortly after the forty-fourth president took office, Bo helped make the White House a home, appearing in portraits and candid snapshots of the family and performing at news conferences. Bo was both adorable and uncontrollable, barking inappropriately, bounding across the meticulously manicured South Lawn, even munching on reporters’ microphones. The news of Bo's death on Twitter instantly stimulated an outpouring of sympathy and grief. Within hours, The New York Times published an obituary. Followers shared heartfelt condolences in the comments, often appending photos of their own dearly departed pets, long gone but still mourned. The president's tweet about Bo received not tens of thousands but hundreds of thousands more ‘likes’ than any of his other tweets during the previous two months—including his post about the death of his grandmother, Kenyan educator and philanthropist Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama. ²

This incredible public reaction to a relatively quotidian event, the death of a dog, underscores the emotional weight and power of that familiar adage ‘dog is man's best friend’. Like all enduring ideas, this one has a long and complicated history—one that was shaped, in part, by performance. Evidence of social bonds forming between humans and dogs stretches back tens of thousands of years, but ‘it has only been in the last hundred or so years that pet keeping in the West has exploded’, Margo DeMello observes. ³ During the 1800s, people in Eurowestern countries began viewing dogs as creatures whose primary value, even utility, derived from love. Not coincidentally, dogs began performing with greater frequency on European, English, and U.S. stages, supported by the generic and affective conventions of melodrama. In this essay, I contribute to conversations about nonhuman animal performers in nineteenth-century theatres, including work by Michael Dobson, Kim Marra, Cassie Mayer and David Mayer, John MacNeill Miller, Claudia Alonso Recarte, and Aline Steinbrecher, by exploring how so-called ‘dog dramas’ both reflected and contributed to the transformation of dogs in the transatlantic imagination from beasts into best friends. ⁴

Scholars in history, literary studies, and animal studies have offered important insights about the changing relationships between pets and people during this period. ⁵ They generally agree that dogs began playing new roles as emotional companions in middle-class households during the mid-1800s, and that by the 1880s, dogs were widely viewed as ‘family members’. However, their research focuses on literature and visual culture: they do not look at popular entertainment or dramatic literature as potential archives for understanding how, when, and why this attitudinal change occurred. When we incorporate the theatre into the story, it becomes clear that this shift began much earlier in the century, during its first and second quarters (1810–30). Additionally, the rage for dog dramas at venues like the National Theatre in New York City suggests that affection for dogs was increasing not only within the bourgeoisie and middle classes (as Keridiana Chez, Katherine Grier, and Kathleen Kete have argued) but also among working-class people.

In this essay, I offer a pair of case studies—a play and a performer—that illuminate this intriguing phenomenon. I explore some of the ways that René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt's 1814 popular and multiply adapted melodrama, The Dog of Montargis; or, The Forest of Bondy, not only exhibited a new dramaturgical approach to nonhuman animals (as Dobson, Miller, and Recarte have argued), but also offered, promoted, perhaps even reshaped views about pets during the nineteenth century. In addition, I briefly examine the career and marketing strategies of U.S. actor-entrepreneur Edwin Blanchard, who toured in England and the United States with roughly a dozen dramas featuring his four-legged co-stars Hector and Bruin. Blanchard's success at working-class theatres suggests that dramas about dogs appealed to a wide range of audiences. Ultimately, I argue that this transatlantically popular dramatic genre, which lives on today in film, television, and social media, sheds light on both the good intentions and troubling contradictions inherent in humans’ relationships with pets.

Carlo and Dragon

In his survey of theatrical dogs from Crab to Lassie, Dobson argues that there is a ‘transformation which overtakes the theatrical dog after Shakespeare—broadly, from exhibit to performer, and thus from prop to character, or at least to narrative engine’. Dobson calls Benjamin Victor's 1762 adaptation of Shakespeare's Two Gentleman of Verona, in which Victor incorporates a tearful plea by Lance for the life of his dog Crab, ‘a decisive break from the earlier notion of the theatrical dog as mere dog’. Lance's feelings toward Crab anticipate the sentimentality that permeates nineteenth-century dog dramas, but Crab is little more than a prop in the play; he is a spectacle rather than a character, and certainly not a ‘narrative engine’ (to employ Dobson's phrase). Presented only six times, it also seems Victor's adaptation lacked widespread traction and appeal. ⁶

In contrast, during the golden age of the dog drama (roughly 1800 to 1870), dogs operated as characters as well as spectacles. Early nineteenth-century plays feature dogs who advance the plot in pivotal ways. The dog's love for and devotion to a human inspires him to perform spectacular feats, such as saving a life or wreaking vengeance upon the villain. In the most sensational scene in Frederick Reynolds's 1803 melodrama The Caravan; or, The Driver and His Dog, Carlo, originally portrayed by a Newfoundland dog, leaps from a platform above the stage into a water tank in order to save a drowning child. London audiences flocked to see this coup de théâtre at the Drury Lane Theatre, and Carlo became a cultural icon, appearing subsequently in satirical prints (as David Mayer and Michael Gamer discuss in their contribution to this special issue of Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film) and novels, including Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). ⁷

A decade after The Caravan, another dog captured the public's imagination, possibly exceeding Carlo in popularity. Pixérécourt's The Dog of Montargis premiered in Paris in 1814 and swiftly became the most famous dog melodrama in Europe, England, and the United States. The play was presented regularly at Pixérécourt's Théâtre de la Gaîté for twenty years, and almost immediately, translations and adaptations began appearing on British and U.S. stages under the title The Forest of Bondy. Inspired by a legendary event from fourteenth-century France, the plot centres on Aubri, a military captain, and his faithful dog Dragon. Macaire, a member of the regiment who is jealous of Aubri, kills the captain. Dragon witnesses the murder. Macaire buries Aubri's body in the woods, assisted by his villainous comrade Landry. The dog, deeply distressed by Aubri's murder, seems desperate to inform the human community of what he knows. Dragon attracts the attention of Dame Gertrude, an inn proprietor in a nearby village, by opening her courtyard gate, scratching at her door, and ringing a bell. When she comes outside, he tugs on her skirt (or seizes her handheld lantern, in later versions) and exits the courtyard, signalling with this gesture that he wants her to follow him into the forest. Dragon leads her to the corpse, and Gertrude informs everyone else. A mute boy in the village, named Eloi in Pixérécourt's drama and Florio in at least one English version, is accused of the crime because he possesses a pocketbook that Aubri gave him for safekeeping. Like Dragon, Eloi/Florio lacks language, and cannot explain or defend himself. In the medieval legend that inspired the play, the dog attacks the murderer and compels him to confess. But in Pixérécourt's Dog, the titular character does not survive. In order to protect Aubri, Landry kills Dragon, thereby ‘depriving Dragon of his heroic finale’, as Recarte notes. ⁸ However, material evidence continues to accumulate, pointing to Macaire instead of Eloi/Florio. When Macaire is confronted with the evidence, he admits to the crime and is led offstage by the authorities. ⁹ In subsequent translations and adaptations of Pixérécourt's play, which feature more-spectacular endings, the dog survives. ¹⁰ In a three-act English version published in 1816, Macaire attempts to commit suicide and then flees, pursued by Dragon; in the concluding scene, the villain leaps from a cliff into a river, and everyone cheers. ¹¹ In a two-act English adaptation published as part of Dicks’ Standard Plays, Macaire's suicide attempt is successful; in the final scene, Dragon chases Landry and drags him to the ground as the curtain falls. ¹²

‘Have you seen the Dog?’ was the question on theatregoers’ lips when The Dog of Montargis premiered in Paris. ¹³ Were people asking, ‘Have you seen The Dog?’ or ‘Have you seen the dog?’ Probably both. This melodrama and its dog-performer were radically new, even taking into account the innovations of The Caravan. Peter Brooks argues that the ‘mute person’ in Pixérécourt's drama, Eloi/Florio, is ‘more important than the dog’; but in making this claim, Brooks disregards, even ignores, the significant differences between the human and nonhuman performers, which spectators surely perceived. ¹⁴ Miller—echoing Bert O. States's observations about how a dog's essential, nontheatrical ‘dogness’ is always present on stage—points out that nineteenth-century dramas featuring quadrupeds ‘explicitly thematized the otherness of animal performers, turning animals’ outsider status into a crucial and innovative element of their dramaturgy’. ¹⁵ Of course, spectators probably appreciated the ‘dogness’ of the canine actors who portrayed Dragon, including their impressive ‘tricks’ and their apparent obliviousness about performing in a play. But they likely saw both the dog and Dragon—a character who advances the story by providing evidence, communicating with other characters, and, ultimately, avenging the murder of his human companion. In other words, the dog was not only (or merely) a spectacle, but also a sentient being participating and functioning in accordance with melodrama's sentimental, morally legible universe.

In essence, The Dog of Montargis offered a new dogaturgy. Dragon's feelings—his inconsolable grief at Aubri's loss, his affection for the unjustly accused Eloi/Florio, his rage toward Macaire and Landry—instigate a series of events that eventually leads to the expulsion of the two villains from the village. Indeed, Dragon's affective qualities (desperation, determination, fury, love) not only engender trust among the humans but also allow the melodrama to achieve its customary end: poetic justice through the purging of evil from the community. At several points, the human characters recognise Dragon's emotions and compare them to those felt by humans. For example, in the Dicks’ Standard Plays version, Gertrude emphasises the dog's emotional state when she describes what happened while they stood over Aubri's corpse:

There this faithful animal, whose touching action would have done credit to a human form, halted at the foot of a tree, where he began to scratch up the earth—which appeared to be but lately dug—until he discovered to my view the murdered form of his unfortunate master, at the sight of whom the very forest rang with his lamentations. He caressed, fondled, licked his pale face; then, fixing his eyes on me, seemed to rebuke me for not assisting him in his labour. But, alas! all succour was useless. I could only join my tears to his cries, that cut me to the very heart. ¹⁶

In short, she is so moved by Dragon's lamentations that she, too, breaks down in tears.

Gertrude declares that Dragon's grief ‘would have done credit to a human form’. But Dragon is different from the humans in important ways, too. Unsullied by the corrupting influences of human culture and society, Dragon does not know how to lie. As a result, he is the ideal witness. In the 1816 English translation, Gertrude points out to the local magistrate (the sénéschal) that whereas Dragon behaves affectionately toward Eloi/Florio (the person initially accused of Aubri's murder), the dog's attitude toward Macaire (the actual murderer) is completely different:

GERTRUDE: … Now, let me ask you, would [Dragon] have fawned upon the assassin of his master? oppose these marks of kindness to the rage and fury he shows on seeing Macaire, and say who is most likely to have been the murderer.

Although the sénéschal does not say so outright, implicit in his response (‘this evidence is strong’) is the belief that dogs cannot dissemble or deceive. In fact, he declares that Dragon's contrasting reactions to Florio and Macaire ‘cannot be dismissed without further examination’. In the eyes of the human community, Dragon's affective ‘testimony’ is more than sufficient proof of the murderer's identity. The villains anticipate this problem: Landry, in a letter to Macaire, refers to Dragon as ‘the animal whose sagacity was so much to be dreaded’ and promises to kill the dog in order to protect them both. ¹⁸

The nonhuman characters at the centre of nineteenth-century dog dramas pose a significant contrast to the dogs that appeared in earlier plays and performances. ¹⁹ I am not suggesting that spectators forgot that they were watching a trained animal executing learned behaviours. But they did see a different kind of dog. Carlo's and Dragon's feelings drive them to do incredible things, like rescue babies and howl over the grave of a loved one. In the world of The Dog, Dragon is an independent, engaged, and relationship-oriented being, and is repeatedly described as such by the characters who can speak. He makes choices, pursues goals, and feels emotions, as do humans. Moreover, like the dogs that were being invited into middle-class homes for the purpose of improving the human inhabitants (especially children), the canine characters in these dramas exhibit traits usually associated with ‘humanity’: loyalty, care, warmth, affection, determination. Carlo and Dragon are loved because they love. They are more than beasts; they are best friends.

Furthermore, dog dramas are melodramas. As a genre, melodrama tends to focus on domestic concerns, families, local communities, and the individuals who circulate in, out, and through them. In this moral domain, the dog ‘capitalize[s] on the mysterious otherness of animals to suggest that animals have inexplicable but very real knowledge of the cosmic moral order that melodrama struggles to express’, as Miller writes. ²⁰ Dragon is inside the human community—operating within the cast of characters as a walking gentleman, comic sidekick, or detective character—but also, he remains outside of it, Other, due to his nonhuman status, his essential ‘dogness’. The dog's dogness is called upon to do pivotal things, such as sniff out the villain and, literally, bring him down. In the melodramatic world, where spectacle and excess are commonplace, the dog's uncanny passions and abilities seem right at home. So, too, are the extreme emotions that fuel his need for justice. Once justice is achieved, the community can reassemble itself and resume its peaceful existence.

Arguably, a defining characteristic of ‘dogness’ is ‘muteness’ (the lack of language). Brooks argues that ‘the mute role and act, whether dramatically motivated or else simply offered as a given, are of considerable importance in melodrama’ and describes Eloi/Florio as ‘a sympathetic and innocent young man facing a charge of murder before an imposing court, and unable to speak in his defense. … Gesture—rather than any deaf-mute alphabet—is all that he has at his command.’ ²¹ Technically, both Eloi/Florio and Dragon are mute characters and rely on gestures and sounds to communicate. This invites the spectator to focus on all manner of nonlinguistic ‘signs’: the movements and noises of the dog and human pantomimist, the information communicated through scenography, and the emotional cadences and cues of the musical accompaniment. But I argue that Eloi/Florio and Dragon's similarities are overshadowed by the conceptual gap that exists between the human and the nonhuman. The dog and the mute human are perceived differently by other characters in the play and serve dissimilar functions in the plot. Whereas the sweet, good-hearted, and unjustly accused Eloi/Florio serves as a lightning rod for the audience's sympathy, Dragon advances the story in crucial ways, leading Gertrude to Aubri's corpse, bringing material evidence of the crime to the authorities’ attention, and capturing—and, in some versions, executing—the villain. Eloi/Florio's disability forces him to rely on physical gesture rather than speech and prohibits him from (pro)claiming his innocence effectively. Even his staunch advocate, Gertrude, occasionally misinterprets Eloi/Florio, as Brooks notes. ²² In stark contrast, Dragon's nonverbal gestures are efficacious, sometimes precisely because he is a dog. Gertrude easily interprets the dog's cues and instructions, and although she serves as the principal investigator of Aubri's murder, Dragon provides crucial assistance. Unlike a human, Dragon cannot dissemble; this is why Gertrude and the sénéschal trust him, and the villains fear him.

Given the emotional mechanics of The Caravan, The Dog of Montargis, and subsequent dog dramas, it is not altogether surprising that by the late nineteenth century, writings about dogs began emphasising their capacity for feeling. In 1872, Littell's Living Age, a Boston periodical, published a long essay (taken from the British Quarterly Review) titled ‘The Consciousness of Dogs,’ written by social reformer, anti-vivisectionist, and suffragist Frances Power Cobbe. ²³ Citing, distilling, and expanding on previous publications on this topic, such as Delabere Blaine's Pathology of Dogs (1841) and George R. Jesse's Researches into the History of the British Dog (1866), Cobbe surveys the many differences between humans and dogs, such as the ability to speak and the ‘love of intoxicants’. ²⁴ But arguably, the most extraordinary section of Cobbe's essay explores the emotions that humans and dogs have in common. ‘A little reflection shows that a dog approaches a man much more nearly in the matter of feeling than either of physical or mental characteristics,’ including the emotions of ‘anger, hatred, vanity, jealousy, envy, gluttony, love, fear, pride, magnanimity, chivalry, covetousness, avarice, shame, humour, gratitude, regret, grief, maternal love, courage, fortitude, hope, and faith’. She concludes,

If these views be correct, it would appear that a dog's consciousness lies in a circle wholly within the borders of our own. We do not differ from him (as Descartes so strangely supposed) as a living intelligence differs from a machine, nor yet (as many persons seem to think) as in a fairy-tale a man differs from an ogre or a fairy. The only true distinction to which we can lay claim, is that we have entered on a higher state of being, albeit the elements of all our emotions and faculties remain essentially the same as those of the affectionate and intelligent animal.

In sum, Cobbe argues that dogs’ feelings make them worthy of kindness, care, and love. But crucially, she also states that despite the traits they share with humans, dogs are nevertheless ‘far beneath us in the scale of existence’. ²⁵

Hector and Bruin

By the time Cobbe wrote her treatise (1872), beliefs about the similarities and differences between humans and dogs had been repeatedly and routinely represented on European, British, and U.S. stages for nearly seven decades. For example, from the mid-1830s until the 1860s, U.S. actor-entrepreneur Edwin Blanchard built and sustained his theatrical career by developing a substantial repertory of plays featuring dogs. He initially performed these dramas in partnership with fellow ‘dog man’ Barkham Cony in England, and, later, toured with them on his own in the United States. In the spring of 1858, Blanchard secured a nine-week engagement at New York City's National Theatre, which was managed at that time by producer A. H. Purdy and popular comedian and pantomimist George L. Fox. Admittedly, Blanchard's residency at the National represents a relatively short instalment in the long history of the dog drama. But given the lasting success enjoyed by Blanchard, this engagement serves as an illuminating case study of the nineteenth-century craze for dog dramas and some of the marketing and performance practices associated with them. ²⁶

Playbills indicate that during Blanchard's impressive run, the audience would typically see a one- or two-act play starring Fox and/or H. A. Perry (another popular member of the stock company) followed by a one-act dance or pantomime by the Carlo family of gymnasts and clowns. Each evening concluded with a play starring Blanchard and one or both of his trained dogs, Hector and Bruin. It seems few of these dramas were published, but the playbills offer a parade of tantalising titles: The Cattle Stealers, or, The Drover and His Dog; Watch Dogs, or, The Fatal Casket; The Slave, or, The Dogs of the Plantation; The Dog of the Ferry; The Postman and His Dog; ‘Cato’, or, The Dogs of the Plantation; Poor Dog Tray; and the ever-popular The Forest of Bondy, an English adaptation of Pixérécourt's The Dog of Montargis. Sometimes, in lieu of a piece by the Carlo family, the second slot in the bill would feature Blanchard in a dogless pantomime, usually performing as a mute human (e.g., Dumb Sailor Boy, Dumb Man of Manchester) or as a nonhuman animal (e.g., Robinson and His Monkey). This suggests that Blanchard, like Fox, was a gifted pantomimist and capitalised on the popularity of mute characters (both human and nonhuman) in nineteenth-century melodramas. ²⁷ Some playbills feature woodcuts depicting a dog in a theatrical tableau; it seems Blanchard provided these woodcuts to theatre managers for promotional purposes. ²⁸ Other bills prominently advertise Hector and Bruin, listing their names in the cast of characters along with those of the human actors. Perhaps not surprisingly, theatre professionals who favoured the ‘legitimate’ drama viewed the interspecies troupe with disdain. For example, when his stint at the National concluded, Blanchard began an engagement at another theatre nearby, P. T. Barnum's American Museum. Actor-playwright Harry Watkins, who at that time was serving as the museum's ‘Director of Amusements’, complained to his diary, ‘Both the human and Canine actors were wretched failures.’ ²⁹ But these back-to-back engagements at not one, but two, venues in New York City suggest that audiences loved Blanchard and his dogs.

Changing cultural attitudes about pets probably contributed to Blanchard's popularity. As Grier and others have noted, during the eighteenth century cruelty to nonhuman animals was quite common, but some believed that children who were allowed to abuse dogs, cats, horses, and/or birds were more likely to become criminals. William Hogarth makes this argument in his 1751 engraving The Four Stages of Cruelty, in which a boy who tortures dogs and horses grows up and commits theft and murder. ³⁰ During the nineteenth century, this belief gained even more traction, and a cultural mandate to be kind to nonhuman animals steadily emerged. As Grier and Chez observe, mid-nineteenth-century parenting manuals, juvenile literature, women's and children's periodicals, and other publications assert that kindness to animals, particularly in the home, could help children (especially boys) mature into compassionate, considerate adults. ³¹ As a result, advocates promoted the practice of compassionate petkeeping in middle-class homes. Chez summarises, ‘Declaring certain animal uses to be “cruel” enabled the singling out of certain animals to perform emotional labor exclusively, and the encouragement of human-animal intimacies in turn fosters ideas about animals’ emotional capacity.’ People in France, England, and the United States began valuing dogs more for the emotions they sparked in their human companions (kindness, devotion, love) than the practical or occupational functions they fulfilled (hunting, shepherding, protecting property). ³² However, the popularity of dog dramas throughout the nineteenth century, including at venues like the National Theatre, suggests that the sentimentalisation of dogs was not limited to the middle class. The affection and care proffered to dogs in middle-class homes also appeared in the melodramatic stories staged in working-class theatres. Poor and working folks loved their dogs, too—on the streets, in their homes, and in their theatres. ³³

Teddy, Old Yeller, and Lassie

When film superseded live theatre as the principal form of popular entertainment, dogs continued to play leading roles in melodramatic stories, ranging from Teddy at the Throttle (1917) to Old Yeller (1957) to the sprawling and robust Lassie franchise (1943–present). ³⁴ The ongoing popularity and longevity of the dog drama in multiple media suggests that this genre reflected, and perhaps helped to generate, the transformation of dogs from beasts into best friends in Eurowestern cultures. Not all people who live with dogs today view them as members of the family, but the majority do. As Justyna Wlodarczyk writes, ‘the affective value of the companion animal is increasingly officially recognised as the new use value’. ³⁵ This idea—that dogs’ primary value derives from their love, not their labour—has roots in the nineteenth century, when animal-cruelty laws, juvenile literature, parenting manuals, and theoretical discussions about dogs’ emotions emerged with pronounced fervour. Perhaps most significantly, dog dramas like The Dog of Montargis and its many spin-offs promoted a view of companion animals that still permeates petkeeping practices: the nonhuman animals with which we live are similar enough to us that they deserve to be sheltered, fed, and loved, but they are not similar enough to have everything to which a human is entitled.

The costs and benefits of this influential idea are continuing to unfold. Think for a minute or two, and you will easily identify many examples of how it plays out. In this space, I will mention only one. Although most humans are given the opportunity (and the burden) to die a natural death, the companion animals we acquire rarely are. When human family members near the end of their lives, caregivers do their best to offer the dying person as much comfort and agency as possible. But death comes whenever it comes, either on its own or when the dying person chooses. In contrast, humans decide when it is time for a pet to die. This practice, usually glossed over by the popular euphemism ‘putting to sleep’ or the medical euphemism ‘euthanasia’ (‘easy death’), has become the default death for so many pets that a host of cultural artefacts have emerged to assuage caregivers’ guilt about it. For example, when President Obama tweeted about the death of Bo, one follower—obviously assuming the Obamas had euthanised their dog—posted a conciliatory meme depicting a dog thanking her/his human for ending her/his pain at the veterinary clinic. (‘Now I’m old. I’m tired. And I hurt. It's time.’) This reply received more than ten thousand ‘likes’, causing it to rise to the top of the comments. ³⁶ Of course, the choice to end a pet's life is often a tortured one; it is commonly made out of a desire to stop the animal's suffering, or when a caregiver's resources of time, ability, or money can no longer accommodate the pet's needs. Nevertheless, the widespread practice of killing our pets reveals that dogs are still viewed as ‘far beneath us in the scale of existence’, as Cobbe wrote in 1872. ³⁷ In the end, particularly at the end, the pet's celebrated status as a ‘family member’ is revealed for the melodramatic, heart-warming fiction that it is. This fiction, I argue, enables humans to feel good about themselves while clinging to the notion that they are at the top of the hierarchy of living things.

This intertwined pair of contradictory ideologies—that pets and people have a miraculous capacity to love each other, but also occupy an inequitable binary—is one of our many cultural inheritances from the nineteenth century. It is an inheritance that feels particularly important to examine at this moment, when humans can no longer afford to ignore the consequences of their centuries-long ecological imperialism. As Miller points out, ‘Making visible the historical contingencies that shape modern divisions of the world into humans and nonhumans is a project with important moral implications that extend beyond questions of accurate literary historiography.’ ³⁸ The mass extraction and appropriation of natural resources (land, water, habitats) have decimated not only indigenous human communities, but also countless nonhuman cohabitors of our world, whose survival is essential to the ongoing functioning and renewal of the earth. Thanks, in part, to dog dramas and their multimedia afterlives, humans feel reassured that they are ethical and good, even while an unbearable number of species all over the globe are becoming extinct.