Reflections on the Status of the Family Farm Dog

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This is the third post in the NiCHE series Animal Encounters, edited by Heather Green and Caroline Abbott. You can read all posts in this series here.

Farm dogs have left little trace in history, for they were not market commodities nor did they leave a record as pedigreed animals.1 What most farm dogs in North America once looked like would require an extensive study of rural family photographs, but my recollection from the Eastern Townships of Quebec in the 1950s is that many were shaggy and Collie-like, as depicted in Figure 1.2

Figure 1. David Little with Max, Inverness Township, Quebec, 1946. Private collection of the author.

Whatever their size or appearance, the farm dog’s chief role was to help herd the cows from the pasture to the stable at milking time. A good cow dog was a natural “heeler” not a herder like a sheep dog, for the object was to keep the cows moving in as straight a line as possible. Another role was to guard against chicken predators such as weasels and foxes, but (as Figure 1 illustrates) they could also serve as much loved guardians and companions for farm children.

One writer claims that farm dogs did not begin to be viewed as pets until the 1940s, following the Saturday Evening Post publication of the short story, “Lassie,” and the introduction of commercial dog food.3 Many farm families clearly established emotional bonds with their dogs before that decade, but the fact remains that (in sharp contrast to today’s pet dogs) a farm dog’s diet was mostly table scraps. They slept outside much of the year, and the local veterinarian was rarely called upon except for livestock that had a significant monetary value. Dogs on most farms were never in short supply due to the fact that the females were rarely spayed.

Figure 2. Dog and Cart on the Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec. Private collection of the author.

In addition to their aforementioned roles, farm dogs occasionally served as draft animals. To take one Quebec example, the photographic record reveals that they were sometimes hitched to sleds hauling barrels for gathering sap during the sugar-making season.4 More common, however, were carts pulled by farm dogs during the summer. That was particularly the case on the Gaspé Peninsula on the St. Lawrence River’s south shore, where by the early twentieth century dogs were increasingly featured on postcards and became the frequent photographic subjects of automobile tourists seeking to experience the pre-industrial past (see Figure 2).5 Nor, for a time, were they spared from labour in the more prosperous dairy-producing southwestern region of the province, where dog-powered treadmills were introduced in the 1870s to churn butter (see Figure 3). An advertisement published in Huntingdon County’s Canadian Gleaner in March 1877 promised that one such system, Wilson’s Improved Dog Powers, were “neatly and substantially made, on correct mechanical principles,” and that a common farm dog could easily do the churning for 20 or 30 cows.”6 Wilson’s was said to have sold 160 dog-powers during the ensuing summer, and the Gleaner reported in the fall that “[c]hurning by means of powers is, to the dismay of all good-sized dogs, becoming the universal practice in the District. There [sic] efficiency has been thoroughly tested in the best dairies.”7

“Like humans, animals resist, and it is that resistance, and the consciousness and intelligence behind it, that distinguishes animal power from all other kinds of [non-human] power.”

Joanna Dean and Lucas Wilson, “Horse Power in the Modern City,” in R.W. Sandwell, ed., Powering Up Canada: A History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 99.

Urban newspapers expressed little sympathy for the dogs relegated to mechanical status:8 for a short notice in Quebec City’s Morning Chronicle in 1877 stated that “[quite] a number of farmers in [Ontario’s] Goderich township are getting dog-churns, and a great many useless dogs are made to do active service on an inclined plane or circular platform.”9 Three years later, a Montreal Witness article declared: “[h]appy are those who have a dog-power, and an otherwise useless dog, who can be put to the treadmill for an hour or two, just as well as not.”10

Figure 3. Plywood Image of Dog on Treadmill. Photo courtesy of David Landry, Mansfield Historical Society, Mansfield, Connecticut, June 2024.

Stories repeated in newspapers of the late nineteenth century did give the dog some agency. In one such example, this is reflected in print which related the story of Ponto: a mastiff (certainly not your average farm dog) who headed to the woods each week on churning day — only to be outwitted when the farmer changed the churning schedule.11 Apocryphal though it may have been, this story illustrates the point made by historians Joanna Dean and Lucas Wilson that “[like] humans, animals resist, and it is that resistance, and the consciousness and intelligence behind it, that distinguishes animal power from all other kinds of [non-human] power.”12

Fortunately for farm dogs, the use of dog powers had ended by the turn of the twentieth century, by which time factories had largely replaced the home production of butter.13 And even though they may not have been pets in today’s sense, neither were they simply viewed as equipment. As cow herders in the era that preceded industrialized dairy farming with its lack of need for pasturing, the humble farm dog required considerable skill and intelligence, as well as more independence than is experienced by the pet dogs of today.14 Rather ironically, canine-powered treadmills have experienced a recent revival, but only to exercise the pampered dogs who spend most of their lives confined to urban apartments.15

Notes

[1] For a brief history, see “The History of Farm Dogs,” AgforLife, www.agricultureforlife.ca/post/the–history, posted 8 June 2022, viewed 4 April 2024.
[2] They somewhat ressembled the breed known as the English Shepherd that was once common in rural America. Alton Jones, “The Original American Farm Dog,” guildofshepherdsandcollies.com. Viewed 4 April 2024.
[3] Sheri Hathaway, “Farm Dogs’ Role has Changed Over the Years,” Western Producer, https://www.producer.com/farmliving/farm–dogs–role–has–changed–over–the–years/. Posted 17 May 2018, viewed 4 April 2024
[4] See, for example, the photographs in Jean-Roch Morin, La Route des Sucriers: Quand on Faisait les Sucres en Noir et Blanc au Québec ([no city]: Éditions Conifère, 2023), 111-12.
[5] See Nicole Neatby, From Old Quebec to La Belle Province: Tourism Promotion, Travel Writing, and National Identities, 1920-1986 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018), 103-4, 115.
[6] Canadian Gleaner, 29 March 1877.
[7] Canadian Gleaner, 20 Sept. 1877.
[8] John Berger, About Looking (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 9-11.
[9] Morning Chronicle and Commercial and Shipping Gazette, 16 Nov. 1877.
[10] Montreal Daily Witness, 6 Aug. 1880.
[11] Quebec Morning Chronicle, 29 Sept. 1891. The story was taken from the magazine, Forest and Stream.
[12] Joanna Dean and Lucas Wilson, “Horse Power in the Modern City,” in R.W. Sandwell, ed., Powering Up Canada: A History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 99. Historian Susan Nance states that domesticated animals may have had agency, but they lacked power in human-dominated contexts. Susan Nance, “Introduction,” in Susan Nance, ed., The Historical Animal (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2015), 5.
[13] The Smithsonian Institute claims that dog-powers were never in widespread use in the United States, and that most of those to be found in American museums are from upstate New York. Smithsonian, “Dog-powered Butter Churn Patent Model.” Accessed 15 April 2024.
[14] “About Dairy Cows”. Viewed 17 April 2024.
[15] The AKC’s “Use Your Treadmill to Exercise Your Dog” and Preventive Vet’s “Dog Treadmills: What You Need to Know“. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.
Featured Image: David Little with Max, Inverness Township, Quebec, 1946. Private collection of the author.
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Jack Little

Jack Little is a Professor Emeritus in the Simon Fraser University History Department. He currently lives on Salt Spring Island, and publishes mostly on Canadian rural history with a wide-ranging geographic and thematic focus.

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