Paws for thought

Mary Miers enjoys a touching show of canine imagery that highlights our relationship with ‘the only thing on earth that loves you more than himself’

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IN the lamplit cellar of the Blue Anchor Tavern in London’s Bunhill Row, a group of top-hatted Victorian gentlemen and two military officers crowd round a wooden-planked enclosure. Fob watches in hand, the gamblers have placed their bets and are gazing intently at a horde of rats, which dart about the blood-spattered pit and try to scramble up the corners. It’s one of the most arresting images in this enjoyable little show, all the more so because there appears to be no dog in the picture—until you look more closely and notice a terrier sinking its jaws into the neck of a rat almost as big as itself.

Tiny the Wonder was owned by Blue Anchor innkeeper Jemmy Shaw, who brought in rats from Essex—considered healthier than London’s sewer rats—for the matches conducted below his pub. Weighing only 5½lb, Tiny held the rat-killing record, felling 200 in just under 55 minutes in 1848.

The print reminds us that, by the 19th century, there was a strong urban dimension to sporting with dogs. As hare coursing declined in the early 20th century, greyhound racing became hugely popular and a taxidermy example of that breed, mounted in full sprint, juxtaposes visions of these grittier events with country scenes of dogs bred for shooting, hunting, coursing and hawking.