Questions and Answers

Last November I posted a blog about the sudden death of our English Springer Spaniel Ollie and paralleled the importance of him in our lives with the role that dogs played in the lives of GertrudeandAlice.  I ended the piece anticipating a grand-nephew of Ollie’s, a new little dog who would come to know us.

Well, Fritz arrived last week Priority Parcel on American Airlines from Dallas to San Francisco.  This little fellow has already accumulated a lot of miles considering he was born in Ohio!

So here he is:

And wouldn’t you know it, Gertrude Stein had a thing or two to say about the traumas of house-breaking a dog. Just take a look at this excerpt from her children’s book THE WORLD IS ROUND published in 1939 with illustrations by Clement Hurd.

Rose had two dogs a big white one called Love, and a little black one called Pépé, the little black one was not hers but she said it was, it belonged to a neighbor and it never did like Rose and there was a reason why, when Rose was young, she was nine now and nine is not young no Rose was not young, well anyway when she was young she one day had little Pépé and she told him to do something, Rose liked telling everybody what to do, at least she liked to do it when she was young, now she was almost ten so now she did not tell every one what they should do but then she did and she told Pépé, and Pépé did not want to, he did not know what she wanted him to do but even if he had he would not have wanted to, nobody does want to do what anybody tells them to do, so Pépé did not do it, and Rose shut him up in a room.

Poor little Pépé he had been taught never to do in a room what should be done outside but he was so nervous being left alone he just did, poor little Pépé. And then he was let out and there were a great many people about but little Pépé made no mistake he went straight among all the legs until he found those of Rose and then he went up and bit her on the leg and then he ran away and nobody could blame him now could they. It was the only time he ever bit any one. And he would never say how do you do to Rose again…

COPYRIGHT HANS GALLAS ©2010

Tagged Clement Hurd, Gertrude Stein, The World is Round