Dogs

From the small corgis that drove cattle to Smithfield market to the Dalmatians that protected carriages from highwaymen, humans and dogs have relied on each other for millennia. Historian and dog-lover Mike Loades joins Dan to trace the history of our close relationship with dogs. They discuss the first proto-dogs, the bloodhounds that hunted down William Wallace and the little lap dog that hid under Mary Queen of Scots' skirts during her beheading (allegedly.) You can see History Hit's 'History of Dogs' documentary series on History Hit TV. To watch, sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Mike's book is called 'Dogs: Working Origins and Traditional Tasks' We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

  Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favourite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Outdated technology isn't going to improve a disconnected healthcare system. Next. So what will? At Optum, we wake up every day and work for better. We call it healthy optimism. It's how we use insights and technology to help providers focus less on paperwork and more on patients. Will we fix it all overnight? No, but we'll wake up trying, again and again, until healthcare works as one for everyone. That's healthy optimism. Learn more at optum.com.

• 1:58Dan Snow?

  Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. It's a love affair stretching back tens of thousands of years. The love between a dog and an owner. In some ways, more dependable and long-lasting than the love that exists between two humans. On an ancient Roman tombstone, one bereft owner wrote of his deceased friend: "My eyes were wet with tears, our little dog, when I bore thee to the grave. So, Patricus, never again shall thou give me a thousand kisses. Never canst thou be contentedly in my lap. In a resting place of marble, I have put thee for all time by the side of my shade.

• 2:43Dan Snow?

  What a loved companion have we lost."

• 2:49Dan Snow?

  Now, if I dropped dead today, I'm not convinced my wife would write that nice an epitaph for me. Not convinced. And that's because, well, we all know, dogs understand human emotions more than any other animals, often more than any other humans. They have astonishing senses, their sense of smell can be something up to 100,000 times stronger than ours. It's why they can sense chemical changes in our bodies, they can detect diabetes and epileptic seizures before they take place. As I'm sure many of you know, the connection between us and dogs, one of the greatest joys of our human experience, it has been for millennia.

• 3:32Dan Snow?

  I grew up with Welsh corgis on my grandma's farm in Canada. My wife and I had a great dane before we had kids, he was called Otto, after the Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. And through the ages, dogs have been protectors and hunters and gatherers and comrades and companions. In fact, I learned from this podcast, they've been doing a bewildering range of very important jobs. I'm joined today by historian Mike Loads. He has recently made a documentary for History Hit, so make sure you go and get a subscription everyone, historyhit.com/subscribe. The documentary is all about this tangled story of man and canine. It's available now on the History Hit TV app. And here he is to help us trace the history of our relationship with dogs.

• 4:15Dan Snow?

  We're going to talk about bloodhounds, Elizabeth the First's army. We're going to talk about the Dalmatians, fierce Dalmatians apparently, that protected coaches from highwaymen, and the vital role of colleagues in the agricultural revolution. If you're a dog lover, this episode is for you. Enjoy.

• 4:52Dan Snow?

  Welcome back to the podcast, Mike Loads.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Thank you. Good to be here.

• 4:57Dan Snow?

  Let's get the housekeeping done. Dogs and wolves, wolves and dogs, are they the same thing, different, descended? Do the family tree for me.

• 5:05Speaker 03

  Okay, so it all starts around 100,000 years ago, but the dates are very murky and the information is quite murky, but there is general acceptance as to what happened. And that is that some kind of symbiotic relationship between wild wolves and humans started then. They were a mutual benefit. They're scavenging around human camps. So if you have a wolf pack that doesn't mix particularly with other wolf packs, that just breeds within itself, quite a large pack, over the generations, it becomes beneficial

• 5:48Speaker 03

  to survival for that pack to become slightly more docile, less of a threat to the humans, so it can edge in closer and scavenge around the camp.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  That obviously takes thousands of years to develop and they get to what is called a proto-dog, though no one's ever found a proto-dog, but it is referred to. And that happens about 15,000 years ago. So there's a sort of 85,000-year slow wooing between the two species. But then around 15,000 years ago, we start to get evidence that the dog has been domesticated, or 15, 10,000 years ago, coinciding with the beginning of agriculture as far as we know at the moment.

• 6:41Dan Snow?

  I learned from your book as well that dogs are less closely related to modern wolves. They're distant, distant cousins now. That wolf has morphed into other things as well.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  It has, but it has a, you know, you even take a Pekingese and the DNA, it's in the 90% I think of wolf. You would be surprised how small the dial is on the genetic changes from a wolf to a domestic dog.

• 7:09Dan Snow?

  And I'm so interested by this symbiotic, these are two animals, humans and the wolf in this case, that that just sort of realise subconsciously that their interests are aligned and they

• 7:21Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 7:22Dan Snow?

  They start working together at first, I say not consciously, but eventually the human will take one of these animals in hand and train it. But there is a, there is an understanding between these two animals. It's fascinating.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Exactly. It really is. And I think that's the key for the enduring fascination. We were predestined to come together in the sense that we're so similar and we see ourselves in dogs at an animal level. We're both pack animals. We are both social animals. We both have hierarchies. We hunt strategically, tactically in packs. That's a lot of commonality at an animal level. And we both have deep affection.

• 8:10Dan Snow?

  Yeah, both capable of enormous loyalty and affection. Presumably, we then also selected for "nice, affectionate, useful dogs" as well. So actually, there's a permanent artificial selection, in fact, going on in this story.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So, once we get to roughly 15,000 years ago, then what happens is the natural selection of it being beneficial to be a little bit more docile around humans, because if you are, they'll throw you a bone. And there's this, you know, a reciprocal arrangement that they can help guard you, they can do all sorts of things. Once you get to that, then people start breeding for particular traits that are of use to humans. But what is always of use to humans is that bond of affection and loyalty. So even if you're breeding a shepherd dog, well, a shepherd's a lonely fellow.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  He's on the hill, day and night, months on end, his only companion, his dog. So, yes, the dog's very good at rounding up sheep, or at guarding sheep, or whatever it may be. But you also want one that's a best friend. Similarly, the hunter's dog, you know, he's out there in the watery wastes, or hunting ducks, or he's off chasing something somewhere else. He wants the dog to do that job, but he also wants a pal with him. So it's natural that that companionship gene actually comes in pretty much all the things. Even if you took guard dogs, who you're breeding for aggression,

• 9:50Speaker 03

  but the handler doesn't want to get bitten. So it'll be a one-man dog, but it'll have affection for him.

• 9:59Dan Snow?

  Yes, now that my children are getting older, I realise that I need a dog in my life because a dog is the only thing that looks at you like a nine-year-old child looks at their parent. They just think it's the coolest person in the whole world, and they just want to spend all their time with them. Sadly, the children grow up and realise the flaws of their parents. But dogs just seem locked in that state. It's great.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  You're exactly right, and they are. That is one of the things, comparing it back to the wolf. Dogs are in a permanent juvenile state. So for instance, a wolf cub has floppy ears. The pricky has come later on as it matures. Well, our soppy spaniels, well, I've got floppy ears. So it's a juvenile trait that's perpetuated.

• 10:39Dan Snow?

  Traits are important because as you've started to allude to, humans quite quickly start to select dogs for actually completely different tasks. And we see in the world today, we've got cosy little dogs just to keep us company and help boost our mental wellness. And we've got dogs, as you say, that retrieve, that track, that round up sheep. So if you go back in the archaeological record, do you see humans selecting for these traits quite early on?

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And that's where my interest really starts. I mean, the stuff we've talked about is, we can't quite pin a date on it. But once dog history intersects with human history in a way that we can read about and study and see evidence for, then that's where I think it gets really interesting. And that dog history and human history from then on are interlinked, and both can inform each other. We use dogs to do different things, and we influenced the breeding. So if you had a dog that was particularly fierce, then you might develop that into a strain of guard dog. If you had a dog whose natural instinct

• 11:52Speaker 03

  was to herd, to shepherd, and you see it in little puppies, that some do something, some do others. And you can create a type quite quickly. You know, a dog litter has anything from sort of eight to fourteen puppies. So a male dog can sire several hundred puppies in its lifetime. So, you know, in a decade, you've got a completely different style of dog with human selective breeding influences. And that is why we have this fantastic portfolio of amazing dog types. Breeds are a different thing, and that doesn't really happen until the 19th century.

• 12:35Speaker 03

  Until the 19th century and the kennel clubs were formed and breeds were identified. You know, you have to have this characteristic and your tail needs to be so many inches long and your back needs to be at that angle and your whiskers must be this colour or whatever it may be. Until then, selective breeding was entirely for function and form and function were intertwined as they always are. So we had types, but the specific breeds where they're locked in didn't really happen until the mid 19th century and the kennel clubs.

• 13:10Dan Snow?

  But I learned from your work that the Romans, I mean, the Romans really evolved pet cats. So it's not that everyone had working dogs in the past and lap dogs were popular in elite Roman circles.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Absolutely, they were, and they're the ones we know about the most. Obviously, one of the most moving images from antiquity is the dog from Pompeii. But there is also, you know, the cave canum guard dogs, the mosaics with hunting friezes on them when they're sight hounds. And they had their herding dogs and their livestock guardians. So they had the full range, but yes, companion dogs, the militares, the sort of predecessor of the Maltese were popular. And we know they had dog burials, which shows us that they were beloved pets. But they were beloved by the Greeks as well, and I have no doubt. Also by the Egyptians and by unnamed cultures.

• 14:08Dan Snow?

  It's in the dance, not its history. More dogs coming up after this.

• 14:17Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery. A detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what all baffle historians about us. Mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 15:33Speaker 05

  What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America?

• 15:44Speaker 05

  I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership. Find American History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.

• 16:28Dan Snow?

  Let's whiz forward a little bit to where we have really quite interesting sources. Tell me about the Tudor Court. What have you learned about the various different kinds of dogs that you might have stumbled across in the court of, say, Elizabeth I?

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Ah, well, there's an interesting question. The dogs of the Tudors, we really start to get good evidence because Elizabeth I's physician, John Keyes, was also a naturalist. And he wrote the first book, he was the first Englishman to write a book, classifying all the dogs in Britain, depending if you're talking about geographic Britain or Britain as a political idea. But he categorized these dogs. Now, in his classification, there are a lot of hunting dogs, gaze hounds, which are like

• 17:17Speaker 03

  our sight hounds, greyhounds, beagley harrier sighthound-type dogs, pack dogs, and the bloodhound. And I've just recently filmed with bloodhounds. Oh, they're wonderful. Do you know that a bloodhound has 230 million olfactory cells?

• 17:40Dan Snow?

  What, those are for smelling?

• 17:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, smelling sensors, which channel the scent up to the olfactory bulb, where they create an odour image. And an odour image for the bloodhound has, I think, 40 times more information than does a photograph for a human.

• 18:02Dan Snow?

  What?

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Yes, it's quite interesting, isn't it? Well, we know today, you know, we have dogs that can detect cancer in people. Dogs are extraordinary.

• 18:12Dan Snow?

  And those bloodhounds were evolved as incredible sniffer machines?

• 18:17Speaker 03

  Sniffing machines, yes.

• 18:19Dan Snow?

  For hunting or the battlefield, why?

• 18:22Speaker 03

  For hunting, but particularly for hunting down fugitives. So William Wallace was hunted down by bloodhounds. Robert the Bruce was hunted by bloodhounds when they were out trying to escape the English armies. The Duke of Monmouth was hunted and found by bloodhounds after the Battle of Sedgmoor. They're used quite a lot. And the Earl of Essex, Elizabeth's one-time favourite, took eight hundred bloodhounds with him on his expedition to Ireland to put down a Catholic rebellion. Why would he do that? Because he presumably thinks it's going to be a guerrilla war and he's going to need to hunt down fugitives in the wild countryside.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  We filmed with a bloodhound pack. And bloodhound packs today, they hunt down a cross-country runner. Nobody's hurt. The worst he gets is, gets licked a lot if they catch him. But he sets off in advance, cross-country runner, just the faintest of scent they're given, and they follow him. But how do you film that? That was one of the most fun filming days I've ever had. Because it's a cross-country runner, we know the path he's going to take. We know that, you know, the route he's going to take. So we plotted that on our phones on GPS. And then I picked various spots where the hounds are going to jump over a hedge or a fence, come round a right-angled bend, over a brow of a hill, all of that.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Picked spots for cameras. But it was magical because it was a timeless scene. That's one of the things about dogs, when we're thinking of dogs in history, is they're so authentic, they're so natural. When you put a dog in an historical context, it's the same. I'm having the same experience with that dog as whatever century you care to put it in. That gives me a connection with the people of that time.

• 20:21Dan Snow?

  So we've got the bloodhounds, which is just extraordinary. Because some dogs, you think, well, they've got no purpose whatsoever. They look nice, they feel nice. But poodles had a purpose.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Again, in Elizabeth's time, they were extremely popular as duck hunting dogs. They were water spaniels. So you think of the word poodle, well, it's like puddle. And our word puddle comes from the German poodle, which means a sort of splash. So there is this water connection. And they've got web feet, you know, the big standard poodles have got web feet, they're water repellent coat, the great water dogs, very powerful swimmers. And the way that you hunted a duck in the 16th century was with a crossbow. So John Keyes actually writes about the water spaniels retrieving the hunter's crossbow bolts when he missed. How useful is that?

• 21:15Speaker 03

  So we did that, you know, shot a crossbow and the poodle went out and retrieved it. And it went out and retrieved a rubber duck in our demonstration. And they're wonderful, really wonderful working dogs.

• 21:27Dan Snow?

  So got working dogs. I always remember there's a story about Mary Queen of Scots, isn't there? When she was beheaded, didn't a sort of little dog pop out from under her skirts? So she had dogs.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. The other really important category that John Keyes talks about in his book is what he calls little dogs or chamber dogs and what today we would call lap dogs. And they were universal at the Tudor court. And Mary Queen of Scots, who had a very lonely childhood, she had a pack of 22 chamber dogs. And it is said, legend has it, that when she was executed, after her head was chopped off, they found her loyal little spaniel hiding still beneath her skirts. Doesn't get sadder than that.

• 22:20Dan Snow?

  Terrifying. Speaking of loyal, moving slightly further on, I think it's the 18th century, I remember a story off the top of my head, about these drover dogs, because obviously no refrigeration, if you want to take meat to the city, it's got to be alive, it's got to walk there itself. And these dogs would, you tell me, but they would sort of go from South Wales across to Southern England, and then, and then, they'd find their way back home again, by themselves and stuff. I mean, it's an extraordinary.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Yes. And the dogs you're talking about there are corgis. And I went to meet this wonderful character, who still herds his black cattle with Welsh corgis. He's in Wiltwells in Wales. And you think corgis, surely that's, you know, our associations of them as royal pet dogs, but they're lively little dogs, much faster than you might expect, and because of their proximity to the ground, what they do is they nip at the cattle's heel to move them along. And when the cow kicks, it just misses the dog, because the angle of a cow's

• 23:24Speaker 03

  kick, and the height of a corgi, is a hair's breadth, and the corgi can nip at the cattle and be unharmed. But yeah, they would drove from Wales all the way to Smithfield Market in London. We used bearded collies, the shaggy dogs, similar to the Old English sheepdog type, and have worked with those down in the West Country, where they would bring the sheep up to London. The deal with that, the deal with droving, is you need your livestock to arrive at market in prime condition, you know, with as much meat on it as you could sell it per pound. So the droving dog needs to be quite gentle, quite different to that

• 24:09Speaker 03

  style of working of the border collie, which is always a magical sort of Formula One thing to watch, but it's lightning fast, and it whizzes those sheep around, gallops them around, gets them into a pen. Very useful for managing them on the farm. But when you want to take them a long distance, you need a completely different character, and that's the droving dog. Whether it's the little corgi pushing cattle, or a bearded collie droving sheep.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  Walking along that day, even though we're filming, I often forgot we were filming because it was so calming, so pleasant. That ability of dogs to, you talked earlier about their ability to sort of heal us, is they really can have a wonderfully calming energy. And those really were magical.

• 25:02Dan Snow?

  So, speaking of that period in our history, carriage dogs, I've always been struck by that expression, carriage dogs. What does that mean?

• 25:10Speaker 03

  Carriage dogs were dogs that guarded the carriages. So eighteenth into early nineteenth century is the grand age of carriage travel. It happens then because it's only by then that roads are good enough for there to be, you know, fast, decent carriage travel. Yes, royals had had a few trundling carriages before, but they weren't really a good way of getting around. But once you start to get a better road system, then you have carriage travel. And once you have carriage travel, then you are prey to highwaymen. Not just the travellers inside the coach who may be carrying valuables, but also the horses.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  Horse theft was a big thing and carriages had to stop at inns overnight. So carriage dogs, now, there's limited space in a carriage. Space is at a premium. So the carriage dogs used to run behind, tremendous stamina. Dalmatians were the favoured type. And although they're wonderfully affectionate today because of selective breeding to create that, they were once quite aggressive. And I remember, because I'm very ancient as a child, you know, Dalmatians had a reputation of being a bit bitey, not anymore.

• 26:34Dan Snow?

  Oh, really?

• 26:35Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. But absolutely, in the eighteenth century, they were aggressive, but with this enormous stamina. And they would trot behind the carriages for mile after mile after mile, guarding the coaches. Spotty dogs, you could see them, so a deterrent to highwaymen. And of course, you know, highwayman comes and you think, oh, how are they going to, you know, highwayman's got a gun. But you see, the highwayman has to get to the carriage on a horse. And a carriage dog will drive that horse off before the highwayman can get in shot range. And they slept with the horses in the stable overnight. So that if you're stopped at an inn, you don't want your horse to be stolen, but you want to

• 27:19Speaker 03

  go to bed, you know, if you didn't have a carriage dog, the coachman had to sleep with the horses. But with a carriage dog sleeping and guarding the horses, he could get a bed for the night.

• 27:29Dan Snow?

  You're just describing a world in which dogs, we're so familiar with dogs now, but for most people, dogs primarily in a pet role, very controlled boundaries of going for a dog walk and having a cuddle on the sofa at night. You're describing a world in which you'd have seen dogs everywhere, serving

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:46Dan Snow?

  purposes, doing jobs, as we might describe them.

• 27:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, and interdependence. That was the, the engine that powered this deliberate development of different types. That's why we have this galaxy of different types. And we could lose it very quickly. It's a precious and fragile heritage. And I personally think we need to look after it just as much as we need to conserve the wildlife in the natural world.

• 28:17Dan Snow?

  Let's finish up with the monologues. You do mention that, you know, dogs have been trained to sniff out cancer and that symbiotic relationship continues, not just in those traditional fields of retrieving for hunters and sportsmen or rounding up animals. There are other symbiotic jobs that go on.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  Yes, they are. And one of the everyday things that symbiotic is people throwing a stick or a ball for their dog. There's a lovely letter from Lady Lyle, who was a head of the Eighth Corps. And she talks about a poodle who's very good at retrieving a glove on a stick. So you imagine sticking a glove on a stick and throwing it for the dog to retrieve. Well, that's just like you go to the park today and see all these people with these plastic balls. Throwers. So everybody loves throwing something for their dog and the dog bringing it back. It's a mutual reward system that goes on with all dogs every day. But yeah, we use them for guarding us. We use them, a lot of military and police and things use

• 29:18Speaker 03

  dogs in those roles. They're used as flock guardians more and more as there is more rewilding, reintroduction of wolves in certain areas. And the way to help keep that balance is to give the flocks a flock guardian, which deters the wolves. There is for dogs at airports, there is guide dogs for the blind and for the deaf. Our interdependence is now so deeply interwoven.

• 29:48Dan Snow?

  Mike Loads, my interdependence with your history content is interwoven as well. So thank you for coming on and talking all about your wonderful book and your TV show. Tell us what they're all called.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  The films which are now on History Hit are Dogs of the Tudors and Dogs in the Age of Revolutions, which is roughly 1760 to 1850. And my book is called Dogs: Working Origins and Traditional Tasks.

• 30:16Dan Snow?

  Beautiful. Thank you very much, Steve, for coming on, Mike.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Thank you, Dan.

• 31:02Dan Snow?

  Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.