Feist Dogs

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Squirrel-hunting phenoms are renowned for breaking wind

You won’t find them at the Kennel Club

America’s all-purpose farm dog, celebrated by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and William Faulkner, was made redundant by pesticides and a creepy urban preference for ‘pure’ bloodlines

By Virgil Huston

Maude showed early that she was a smart dog. She learned that she got a treat when she peed outside. She started asking to go out and doing a fake pee squat. When I figured out what was going on, the treats ended. She stopped the fakery after realizing the jig was up. I had no idea what kind of dog Maude was. Her very pregnant mother was abandoned near my brother-in-law Bobby’s house in middle Georgia. He was dying of cancer at the time, and there were lots of family, friends, and dogs around. That beagle-looking momma picked Bobby’s house and yard for her litter to enter the world. Maude was named by Bobby a few days before he died, so she was special from the start. Maude is black, with some white on her nose and chest, and her brindle pattern getting stronger going down her legs. She has a tail curling over her back, which was full of sleek muscle, and a fine set of jaws. Her weight stays around 22 pounds. When I took her to the vet, I asked what breed Maude could be. The vet knew …

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The Fantastic and Terrifying Mr. Clean

A museum pays quasi-subliminal tribute to the decay that surrounds us, to which we must inevitably return

‘Don’t be a Button Hole’

Cleanliness is a road to divinity. But did Father know what was going on back home?

By Walter Kirn

The headlines that morning in Pocatello, Idaho, were grim for a town of 57,000 people. I read them in the local paper at Elmer’s Restaurant while enjoying the house specialty, a “German pancake” with a crisp, raised rim that held the syrup and butter in a neat pool. A 27-year-old man had been sentenced to life in prison for murdering his mother, the director of a Humane Society chapter. Another man, 39, had been arrested after a high-speed chase for stealing a car with a “juvenile” inside — a baby or a teenager, it didn’t say. And over in Boise, the state capital, the legislature had passed a bill to permit the death penalty for “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel” acts of “lewdness” against minors under 12. The story mentioned that during its previous session, the legislature had passed another bill allowing for executions by firing squads “if lethal injection chemicals can’t be obtained.” But to me, eating pancakes and preparing for my day, the most upsetting article was the …

Feist Dogs

The Fantastic and Terrifying Mr. Clean

The Front Porch