CanadaPups.comTM
Find your new best friend today.

Dog News



The Hardworking Dogs of Medieval Europe

Not everyone can be a pampered pooch

April 15, 2021

Most dogs today are slackers. A few have jobs—as guides for blind humans or K-9 officers, for example. But the range of employment open to canine workers is nothing like it was in medieval Europe, as historian Carole Rawcliffe explains.

In his influential sixteenth-century treatise Of Englishe Dogges, physician John Caius followed the medieval practice of categorizing dogs mostly by “office,” not breed. Hunting dogs and “gentle” lapdogs stood at the top of the social hierarchy. At the bottom were dogs of the “mungrell and rascal sort” who failed to “exercise any worthy property of the true perfect and gentle kind.”

Read Article | daily.jstor.org