Archive for the ‘Dog Tails’ Category

Once upon a time – June 1908, to be exact – an eccentric pseudo-princess portrait painter named Princess Lwoff-Parlaghy came to New York City, where she lived at the Plaza Hotel with a menagerie of wild animals.

I think it was Sport Hopper, the nine-month-old fox terrier of the Hopper household on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, whose much-publicized burial paved the way for the first pet cemetery in the United States.

In previous posts, I wrote about the reindeer on display at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 1944, and about the horses that delivered the first public Christmas tree to Madison Square Park in 1912. In this story, I’m going to tell you about Paddy Reilly and the annual Christmas tree and party for New […]

This Thanksgiving story is dedicated to Old Tom and his fox terriers, and to all the other nameless and unfortunate souls who are interred with him on this island of the dead.

On May 15, 1874, 23-year-old Charles W. Walker, the proprietor of a mill at 602 Broadway that manufactured bottled champagne cider, was arrested and charged with cruelty to animals. According to officers from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), Mr. Walker was overworking his dogs at the mill to the point of suffering, fatigue, and injury.