Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
“ambassadors” to disprove a bully breed's reputation. Dogs sleep just fine. They aren't monit-
oring their position on the annual U.S. dog-bite index. Whether they have bitten someone,
justly or unjustly, or tracked an innocent person who was then arrested, they don't lie awake
at four A.M . stewing that their true purpose—whatever the heck that is—was perverted.
As with most working-dog tales, the history of the bloodhound is steeped in lore, tiny
tributaries of breeding programs that petered out, and popular-culture portrayals: from the
noble early hound in medieval France, Le Chien de Saint-Hubert, to the sleuth hounds (a
Scottish term) used in Europe for centuries to track both game and people. In the United
States, we have McGruff, the animated crime buster, on the positive side; and on the other,
the vicious prison bloodhounds tracking Paul Newman's character in Cool Hand Luke . Walt
Disney's model for Pluto came from his grim 1930 cartoon The Chain Gang , in which Mickey
escapes from prison and a pair of prison bloodhounds track him. When they open their huge
mouths to bay, their fangs are enormous. It must be noted that it was the era when Mickey
Mouse was skinny, had disturbing teeth as well, and looked like a rat.
It is slavery, however, that casts the longest and most inaccurate shadow on the modern
bloodhound. You can see why the breed's devotees try to deny the accuracy of that history.
They are right to. The dogs who tracked and attacked throughout the South during slavery
and the Civil War have little relationship to the bloodhound in the United States today.
During slavery in the southern United States, the catchall phrases for any dogs taught to
follow human trails were “blood-hounds” or “Negro dogs.” They were instruments of terror,
encouraged to be both trackers and attackers. The term “blood-hound” was an indiscrimin-
ate holding pen into which you could throw any number of dog breeds: hounds, foxhounds,
bulldogs, mixed breeds. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about such tracking dogs in her classic
Uncle Tom's Cabin. Not once did she use the word “hound” or “blood-hound.”
Nonetheless, abolitionists were as aware as slave owners of the symbolic power of the
dogs and of the term itself, which represented the horrors of slave tracking and slaveholding.
The iconic illustrations in magazines, newspapers, and flyers of the era didn't resemble the
bloodhound of today; instead, the depictions matched what was known as the Cuban blood-
hound—a mastiff-like war breed, brindled, with clipped ears and broad heads and snouts.
Cuban bloodhounds were a powerful symbol: These were the same huge dogs imported by
British forces to Jamaica in 1795 to suppress a slave revolt. General Zachary Taylor, to his
everlasting regret, approved importing them into Florida to track and attack Seminole Indi-
ans. The dogs weren't any good at finding the Seminoles, but they did create a public outcry,
so they were removed. As historian John Campbell noted, southern slaveholders who used
the Cuban bloodhounds provided abolitionists with great evidence to condemn slave chas-
ing.
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