Canis lupus hominis

The following comes from G.S. Heatley’s Our Dogs and Their Diseases, which also includes a treatise on various types of dogs:

This large and handsome animal derives its name from its native land. It is possessed of extraordinary mental powers, and is capable of instruction to a degree that is rarely seen in any domestic animal

In its native home this noble dog is often shamefully treated, as we are informed that it is frequently converted into a beast of burden, and forced to suffer even greater hardships than those which generally fall to the lot of animals which are used for the carriage of goods or the traction of vehicles. This poor animal’s life is often one of continued privation, and its useful life rendered thoroughly miserable. In winter the chief employment of the inhabitants is to cut fuel, and the occupation of this dog is to draw the carts.

They are frequently urged beyond their strength, and are moreover indifferently and meagrely fed with putrid salt fish, the produce of some preceding season. Very many of these noble dogs sink under the double effects of fatigue and starvation; such are the usages to which it is exposed in its own land.

Here, however, the Newfoundland Dog has found a home; it is raised to the proper position which nature intended it to occupy, and is the faithful friend and companion of man, not his abject, miserable, wretched slave. Many and many a time has it doubly repaid its master for considerate kindness by rescuing him, or some of the fallen creatures of humanity, from mortal peril. Innumerable are the instances upon record of human beings being rescued from drowning by the timely assistance of this dog; and not only does it recognise at a glance the dire necessity of immediate help, but it seems to comprehend thoroughly the entire situation of the drowning, by selecting the head and holding it above the water, as though it had studied the subject with accurate reason. Not only has this wonderful animal saved hundreds of individual lives, but it has even been the means of saving an entire ship’s crew by swimming ashore with a rope in its mouth, when the vessel was being remorselessly dashed to fragments against the rocks.

One should not entirely accept certain aspects of that description.

First of all, the description of how the dogs were used in Newfoundland shows a particularly strong class bias. One of the first goals of the RSPCA when it was founded was to end the use of dogs as draft animals in Britain. It succeeded.

For many, many years, the British people looked down upon those who used dogs for this purpose, for they considered it barbarism.

Of course, for a poor person living in an industrial city, there are few better animals to use for that purpose. A dog does not eat as much as an equine draft animal or an ox.  A dog does not make as much waste as any of those animals, and they are better suited for urban living, where hay and grazing would have always been at a premium.

There is also a colonial bias here. The Newfoundlanders are too backward to know how to properly care for a dog with this intelligence and nobility.

It is only when the dog is exported to Britain that the animal’s truly heroic nature is fully recognized.

At the colonies, this animal is a mere slave. In the civilized nation of Britain, the dog becomes a hero, deserving of a very high position in human society.

One can see in this piece that what the Newfoundland dog symbolized meant more than what it actually was.

The colonies are barbarous places (even in this “white” colony), but in Britannia, things that are truly valuable are exalted.

Here the Newfoundland is kept as it should be.

Never mind that keeping draft dogs in Newfoundland was a definite economic necessity.

Here. the Newfoundland dog is allowed to become symbol–a symbol of Britain’s powerful navy and merchant shipping, a symbol of a growing middle class that can afford to keep large dogs that have no real economic use, a symbol of a vast empire that stretches into the wildest parts of the world.