For the Love of Pugs (Hardcover)

by Robert Hutchinson (Author) "So, what did Queen Victoria and Andy Warhol have in common?..." (more)
Key Phrases: cranial indices, cranial index, dog breeds, Imperial City, European Pug, Chinese Pug (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
... as rich, creative, and playful as the little dog that is its subject ... required reading for vets, breeders, and judges -- Gerda Broekkamp, commissioner and judge of 'Commedia' Vereniging van Fokkers en Liefhebbers van de Mopshond in Nederland ['Commedia' Club of Breeders and Lovers of the Pug Dog in the Netherlands], February 1999

A photographic celebration of the Pug...A coffee-table type book that is fun to own and good to leisurely read through... -- Marcy Heathman, Pugs.com Web Site, December 1999

Product Description
FOR THE LOVE OF PUGS is a rogues' gallery of Pugs captured in the act of going about their usual business of being incorrigibly, devastatingly charming. Each of the eighty-six full-page color portraits by eleven of the country’s best pet photographers stimulates anew our curiosity about the identity and origin of the breed. To these intriguing questions, author Robert Hutchinson marshals the most thoughtful, deeply researched, and daring answers ever to appear in the Pug literature. This book offers you the key to a whole new dimension of Pug appreciation.

The first chapter, "Little Big Dog," reviews the stellar cast of Pug owners (from Queen Victoria to Andy Warhol) and the Pug’s own stellar roles (from Toby the Dog in Punch-and-Judy shows to Frank the Intergalactic Pug in Men in Black). "Mug Shot" measures the Pug’s peculiar head against the skull shapes of natural canids and argues that such extreme flatness of face could only have evolved by artificial selection. A case is made for the priority of flat-faced Asiatic breeds and for the Pug as the agent of the global dissemination of this cranial feature in the dog world. "Even Dwarves Start Small" plugs the Pug into the crazy gerrymanders of canine dwarfing mutations. With scientific sizzle, Hutchinson demonstrates that the conformation of the Pug depends on the simultaneous operation of three dwarfing mutations; compares dwarfing in Pugs and other dwarf breeds; and contrasts the genetics of dwarfing in dogs and human beings.

"China Doll" traces the intimate connection between the Manchu Dynasty (1644-1917) and the privileged presence of flat-faced lap dogs in the Imperial City. The latter are shown to have been conferred by successive Dalai Lamas on the Manchu emperors as incarnations of a Tibetan spirit lion-dog who was central to the divine pretensions of the imperial cult. Suggestive analogies are remarked between the somatypes of these dogs and those of the Manchu bannermen and courtiers.

"Orange Herring" crushingly debunks the received wisdom that the Pug is the Dog Who Saved Protestantism in Holland in 1572. Hutchinson proves that no records of Pugs can be dredged from Dutch or English art and literature prior to the eighteenth century. "French Connection" reveals that the earliest extant record of the Pug in Europe comes from the court of the King of France in 1713. The probable Pug pipeline to Europe is identified as the influential Jesuit missionary-mandarins who shuttled between the courts of Louis XIV and K’ang-hsi, the second Manchu emperor. The Pug was soon adopted as a secret emblem of religious tolerance by eighteenth-century freethinkers.

The final chapter, "One Swallow," examines the strange case of Pisanello’s Pug-like dog, drawn in Venice around 1415.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Browntrout Publishers; First Edition edition (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563139057
• ISBN-13: 978-1563139055
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,395,193 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Brief Critque of "For the Love of Pugs", May 15, 2000

By	Barbara Wilson (Charlottesville, Virginia) - See all my reviews

I am a pug fanatic so I naturally bought this book. I was,however, very disappointed in it. The pictures are gorgeous but have absolutely nothing to do with the text. The text is excellent in some portions of the book but is also very detailed and at times difficult to follow. Had the text been illustrated by relevant pictures, drawings, maps etc, the text would have been much more interesting and easy to understand. This book reads as if it were the author's Masters thesis that he decided to have made into a book without putting any extra work into it. With a bit more effort this could have been a great book!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Topic of entire book is history of the pug- cute pics though, February 1, 2002

By	Lori (Santa Barbara, California) - See all my reviews

Ok, the photos are adorable. This is a wonderful coffee table book, but if you're looking for a guide to owning pugs, do not buy this book. Basically, the book is an in-depth study of the origin of the pug. It reads like a college term paper, which is not necessarily a bad thing, if that's what you're looking for. The introduction sounds like the author chose every other word from a thesaurus--wordy to the point of annoyance! The photos have nothing to do with the text. I bought this book thinking it was more of an owner's guide to pugs, which is why I'm disappointed. If you are studying the history of the pug, this might be a helpful reference tool.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Look, but don't read, July 30, 2002

By	B. Haselton (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The photos in this book are fantastic, but the writing is truly HORRIFIC. It's clear the author has never met a 12-letter word (where a five-letter word would have done perfectly) that he didn't like. OUCH!