In 2011, I’m reading 11 NYRB Classics and blogging about them.
It’s not polite to discuss bodily functions like urination and defecation, much less the clinical details of sexual intercourse and reproduction. And yet, these are things we humans have in common, and the desire to explore them is intense — perhaps moreso because of the taboo.
Luckily for us, it’s not as impolite to discuss animals doing them.
My Dog Tulip is a love story of the highest order: a paean to the biological details, in all their gory detail, of the author’s beloved, a rambunctious and unruly Alsatian named Tulip. J. R. Ackerley, English writer and curmudgeon, uses the figure of his dog to discuss highly indelicate topics and, in doing so, highlights the humanity in animals and the animality in us.
This book is a lovely, touching exploration of Ackerley’s time with Tulip. He shifts quickly from animal unruliness — Tulip bites people and is a terror at the vet’s office — to Tulip’s specific bodily processes. He’s moved by the way she marks his urine with her own out in the woods. He recounts the trials and tribulations of raising a dog — and having her relieve herself — in the city. Then, he moves into the main concern of the book and himself: finding a mate for Tulip, so that she may experience sex and reproduction.
The raw, real details reinforce how far from our present moment this book really is. For the most part, dog owners carry those ubiquitous little blue bags around, scooping up their dogs’ waste and tossing it into the trash (and if not, they face serious fines and harassment from onlookers). Spaying and neutering is de rigueur for pets these days, especially for rescue animals.
I, for one, am rather glad to not have to police my rescue dog’s sexual proclivities when we’re out in public. Contributing to the overpopulation of unwanted and unloved pets is a crime I’m glad to avoid — and one that Ackerley fretted about as well, after Tulip’s litter was given away.
But there’s something romantic and beautiful about the natural bodily processes of animals, especially as Ackerley describes them. Take, for instance, this quote from the book’s final chapter, in which he worries over whether or not to let Tulip mate again:
Alas, Tulip has killed! I push through the undergrowth to the scene of death. She is recumbent, at breakfast. Casting an anxious glance over her shoulder at my approach, she gets up and removes her bag to a safer distance. I follow. She rises again, the limp thing in her jaws, and confronts me defiantly. How pretty is her willful face! It is a young rabbit. Shall I take it from her? I can if I wish. She will yield it up, reluctantly but without rancor. Tape-worms and coccida lurk in rabbits’ livers and intestines. Never mind, let her keep it; it is a well-earned prize, and now, particularly, she must have everything she wants…
Ackerley sketches a sentimental portrait without sentimentalizing. The unlovely realities of Tulip’s behavior are plainly laid out (well… he may have caged a bit on just how unruly she was), and gain, in the harsh light of day, a much more potent beauty.
In the end, too, Ackerley resists the all too common urge of animal memoirs to force the reader into mourning the animal’s death. Tulip’s relatively tiny life is done a great honor by not narrating her death.
The animated film version of My Dog Tulip is playing at BMFI on Wed., January 19th. I’ve not yet told my date about how much dog sex will likely be in it. The trailer doesn’t seem to be honest about that point either.
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