Yet More Dogs I Would Like To Own In Art, Even Though They Are Probably Dead Now

by Mallory Ortberg · January 27, 2016

Previously.

dogs1

CAST ASIDE YOUR WIG-HAIRS AND CUFF-CANES, GENTLEMEN, AND ASSEMBLE UP FOR ME THIS PUDDLE OF DOG-RIBBONS POSTE OF HASTEWARDLY

 

dogs4

unhand to me the beastlet!!! his face is GRIMMALLING and SCROWNFUL and I must stroke his ornery little mug

 

dogs3

delounge yourself and deliver to me this cunning wisplet of a dog suggestion of an immediance

 

dogs2

magnificent fleece-chested lap snuffler! engolden yourself to me, bumble-bristles!

 

dogs6

YOUR DOUR MANKEN-FACE PLEASES ME, LITTLE SNOUTTHATCH

 

dogs7

GIVE ME THE SNARL-WHIPPET

 

dogs8

THE WHITE FLESH-BED, I MUST HAVE IT

 

dogs9

I AM IN NEEDFULNESS OF THESE SCROMMAGERS AT THE ONCELEST!!

 

dogs10

the sleek fish-body snapgrillers? have them of me, snatch them back from the bristlebeaties and fling them to my armlings

 

dogs13

DOG PUDDLES

 

dogs16

SCRUMP THIS FLOP-SKULL DIRECTLY INTO MY HEART CORNERS

 

dogs17

the slump-backed nap-curl fringe-hound, I am needful of him?

 

dogs18

THE LONG WHITE DOG-PULL, ENLANGUIDEN AND ENTRUST ITS SLEEKNESS TO ME 

[Images via]

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.


129 Comments

  1. ZevNV +121

    I think that a “Wonderful Dogs of Art” exhibit would be extremely successful. I myself would go thrice. Wall text by Mallory, obviously.

  2. Maryaed +142

    I would probably regret hugging the porcupines but I wants to.

    That was some quality language-weirding.

    1. PRockette +55

      Science North in Sudbury, Ontario had a tame-ish porcupine you could pet. This was about 17 years ago, so I don’t know if they still do. The fur around his quills was surprisingly soft. And he was very grumpy.

      They also had beavers who had a den in the building with access to the surrounding lake, so they could come and go as they pleased. The younger ones were very friendly and would grab your fingers with their little hand-like paws.

      1. houblonchouffe +35

        asdjkl;WHAAAATTTTTTT BEAVER BABIES

        eta: they still have a beaver and a porcupet, as well as flying squrls and a skunk. <3

      2. dorianneemmerton +10

        They better still have the porcupine, and the beavers, and the bed of nails, for I intend to subject my child to the things I did love about the north in my youth (and try and downplay all the things I hated.)

      3. Trig +1

        GOD DAMN I knew I remembered Science North as the best of all possible museums for a reason!

        And believe you me, I been to them all. We did a cross-Canada roadtrip when I was ten.

    2. theshehulkchef +133

      My description of these captions to my friend: “it’s almost like she has a filter that she runs things through to “Ortberg” them, and she ran this all through twice by accident.”

      I mean this as a compliment, obviously.

  3. ppyajunebug +128

    As always, I stand in awe of the things Mallory is able to do to/with the English language. How does one even pronounce “enlanguiden”?

    1. ThatOtherWench +95

      One of these posts, a month or two from now, will be entirely in metered verse. And we will realize that we were reading the sequel to the Jabberwock the whole time.

      1. Nashirakins +26

        I may or may not have clapped my hands and gone *_* at the very idea. This would be GLORIOUS.

    2. aquamarinaveen +34

      i love it, the circumfix `en..en` is no longer productive in most people’s english, and the only place i’ve seen it used recently(ish) is ’embiggen’, from the simpsons

      1. drashizu +11

        en…en and be…ed are my favorites of those. Befuzzled being the best example of the latter, I think.

      2. patheticworm +1

        The regular Toastariat was no doubt familiar with the word ‘circumfix’, but I wasn’t, so thank you for enlightening me. It’s such a nice, logical word.

  4. Joni +51

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

    GREEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYHOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUNDSSSSSSSSSSSSS

      1. houblonchouffe +4

        I clicked to expand and thought “I really hope ipo has already seen this” AND THERE YOU ARE

      2. Natushka +7

        THANK YOU FOR THIS THING.

        Am seriously considering filling my house with only greyhound-centric art now. As it is I just stare at mine all the time anyway.

          2. Joni +8

            Ahh the Greyhound Lips of Noping

            My sister’s grey made that face at most things which dared approach, up to and including motes of dust.

            Mine own grey (brindle and quite wee) reacts to the approach of small dogs thusly: I Must Taste It With My Mouth

      3. Prawns +3

        Have you seen the Greyhounds at Play sculpture at the Seattle Art Museum? It’s in my top 5 favorite things in that building.

        1. ipomoea +3

          Yes! That room with the greyhound sculpture and the Morris Graves paintings! My favorite EVER. Yall know me.

  5. friendofdaja +88

    “Grimmaling and scrownful” is such a perfect descriptor that I’ll have to use it next time my dachshund puppy tries to be a Big Tough Dog (which is surprisingly often, given his tinyness).

  6. betsymore +54

    I can’t stop staring at Manken-Face in #5. It’s like the artist couldn’t decide if he (?) was painting a dog, a cat, or some terrifying human-pet hybrid.

    1. Es_Petal +16

      There is normally a dog thread each Friday in the open thread but I’m sure everyone will oblige!

      1. owlbrick +41

        This adorable little scamp is Luke, a rescue (terrier, I think?) we adopted about a month and a half ago. He’s settling in quite nicely!

        Lap-snuffler, indeed!

        1. Perdita McLeod +11

          DAT FAAAAACE! IT SO SWEET! I want to squish it! What kind of dog is she? I feel like if I were to get a dog I would want a dog that looks precisely like this dog.

          1. dakimel +10

            She is the Prettiest Dog in the World (and she knows it.) Also insanely soft & silky. It’s unreal.

            We got her from a German Shepherd rescue place, but she’s also got a lot of we think terrier or something in her. She’s smaller than a GS. Some day when I’m an idle rich person I’m going to have her DNA done.

          2. Trig +5

            That’s an Aussie face and coat or I’ll be darned. The feathery mane. The silken tresses. Yes, your DNA test will reveal Aussie heritage, I know it.

            (Other indicatiors, in my experience, are mania, unwillingness to bring back a damn ball if you want it come take it from me oh are we running now I love running no you still can’t have the ball we are running, and extreme cleverness in the sandwich-stealing department.)

    4. ladyimogen +44

      Here are my girls on a windy walk last weekend. Tuva is big and grinning, Sammi is less big with ears flying:

      and here is a gratuitous puppy photo of Tuva when she was wee:

    5. drylime +49

      Here is Juno (aka Junebug) in her knitted jumper:
      Juno.red-jumper

      And here is Eachann (aka Horseman) waking up from a nap:
      Eachann.toothynap

  11. lesliejroot +21

    I got in a bike accident and broke some ribs yesterday, so I probably shouldn’t read Mallory lest I laugh… but #dogcontent!

  12. wakatopatopa +102

    My bestie and I regularly send each other Toast links with the comment “Mallory Ortberg, National Treasure”. It has since been shortened to MONT, and no link is necessary. Mallory, you are a thing, and that thing is great.

  14. smallpistachio +52

    Somebody link me to a rescue/adoption site for sleek fish-body snapgrillers, please. I am in need of several.

      1. smallpistachio +8

        Nah, fictional fish-body snapgrillers are my thing, since I don’t have the resources to keep any actual existing breed of dog!

  17. urspostrophe +23

    Oh I am not even really a dog person, but I would snurgle those lil babies in the first one for sure.

      1. bighairnoheart +14

        Don’t crush the magic. In the dim light of my phone it looks like an afro. Either way. I love it.

  20. nopemobile +58

    I read this entire post in a Stephen Fry voice and it was truly a paragon of delightfulness

    3. Tessa +4

      OH GOD, SO DID I! It started softly in the cornerlings of my mind and then didst trod more heavily, until at the very enderton I was unable to be of not hearing the voiceness of the man himself.

  21. praemunire +31

    Mallory seems to be channeling Mr. Pages from Fallen London.

    Pro tip: any time you go to a museum, sneak off to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European paintings. You will find dogs in every corner. Even in churches! (Many a soaring light-filled Dutch church interior includes a random dog or two relieving itself on a pillar. In fact, I have read that some churches employed someone specifically to roust the dogs out periodically.)

    2. kirstyrolfe +12

      Ooh, an excuse to post my favourite weird historical church paraphernalia – dog tongs!

      I feel great empathy for that poor long-suffering dog.

      1. Apollonia +8

        This is the greatest thing I have ever seen. Just knowing that there was a need to invent dog tongs and that the words “dog” and “tongs” have been put together to describe an actual object, makes me happy.

  23. ltpatridge +44

    I need to learn to talk to my dogs this way. Instead, it’s, “Hey, big man! C’mere, big baby boy!” and “Pretty girls! Y’all some good girls! Come on, babies!”

    (my dog talk is unacceptably gendered and will give them complexes)

    1. Misst_123 +10

      All they know or care about is that you are talking to them with love, and they love you too. Joyous!

  24. Sforza +31

    The lady in #3 is most definitely a 1970’s timetravelling disco queen. This is my headcanon and you can not rob me of it! Just look at her glorious hairdo…

  26. atlasblue85 +38

    I lived by one of those sell any junk anyone has ever owned resale shops my senior year of college and they would often do estate clear outs, which meant they ended up with tons and tons of old family photos. Whenever I went there I would search through the whole bin to find any pictures of dogs which I would then buy and hang in my room. Most of them are probably from the 70s-90s so there’s a good chance pretty much all the dogs are in doggy heaven now and I like to think that even though I never knew any of them they know someone still remembers them and thinks of them.

    1. Mrs_Peel +25

      What a great idea!

      I used to go to a secondhand shop that had a box of random family photos on the front counter, with a sign saying “INSTANT RELATIVES!”

    1. EnchiladaTaco +13

      He looks like he’s about to just throw caution to the wind and climb Mount Velvet in the desperate hope scratchies await him at the summit.

    2. epeus +8

      I went to Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, where that portrait hangs in hall, so we got to see the dog every meal.

  29. builtahouse +33

    I feel like making notes and citations for some future literary paper on Ortbergian dialect. We were here when it happened, folks.

    1. walrathem +12

      Literally! That’s Charles II in the first picture. Does anyone else think that’s Nell Gwynn in the background looking straight at the painter? I like that picture, mostly because it’s supposed to be some kind of commemoration of an important moment but the dogs are clearly the most important part.

  32. Teacherlady +8

    This may be an unpopular opinion, but at least half of these dogs strike me as more terrifying than adorable. Like, they were summoned from the abyss to harry humans across the earth. Or… something.

    Either way, though, Malory’s names are spot on.

    2. Chance_Hale +18

      I’m enough of an RPG dork that my first thought was “oooh, I want to pet the one at Lawful Neutral!”

  34. crawlkill +16

    being dead should be no impediment to our continuing to enjoy art dogs. always thought we should get the Jim Henson Company to go all animatronic and bring back the original literary canine in a little reboot I call Lichbone.

    1. Impractical_Cat +3

      I’d like to offer a passive-aggressive thank you for making me suddenly realise that Wishbone must be dead now. 🙁

      1. crawlkill +4

        it’s definitely a joke designed to shake the pillars of the mill enn ials which I can’t type because I now have a chrome extension that converts it into snake people

    1. Mingus_Thurber +2

      Is a lorikeet an actual thing, or is it a fictional bird designed by Ortberg? Because I see it in my bird books and I hear about it from time to time, but I’ve never seen one in the feather, as it were.

      Plus, “lorikeet.”

      1. Teka Lynn +1

        Very real. I went to the lorikeet enclosure last time I was at the Portland zoo. Those little keets are loud, teensy, and crap all over the place. I should have gotten an award from the zoo for Guest Who Had a Lorikeet Perch on her Head for the Longest Time Without Getting Crapped On. All the attendants had very large straw hats. And possibly earplugs.

  44. Sima +5

    I LOVE THESE POSTS!!!

    I have one small request!

    If there’s any way to make it easier to find out artist names and dates of paintings that would be really great. (Whether a click-through or just name/date underneath).

    P.S. I know this series more about having fun than studying, but honestly this/the comments thread is the most amusing format for learning about Western art history I’ve yet encountered. And also, I sometimes fall in love with a painting you share and then have a tough time figuring out what the painting is!

    P.P.S. And I know that asking you, Mallory, to change what you do when you don’t require readers to pay for it and you do it so wonderfully…is not something I’m entitled to. But on the off-chance that listing/linking to specific artists is something you’d already considered doing, please count this as a vote in favor!

    In any case, hooray, I adore these posts, keep them coming!

  45. Marthooh +4

    That one sleek fish-body snapgriller appears to be a hand-puppet dog on the end of a stick, intended to fake the porcupines into shooting all their quills at it. I’m pretty sure that’s a standard medieval porcupine-hunting technique.

  46. redheadedwolf +3

    MALLORY, I demand you scrupulously collect all of your Mallory-words and phrase and compile (or get them compiled, I know many a handmaiden would be honored to serve) them into a lexicon that I may purchase and learn by heart, so I may speak only and always in the tongue of Mallory Ortberg.

    They bring me joy like precious little on this cold and desolate earth.

  48. Mingus_Thurber +2

    My new hypothesis goes like this: Mallory Ortberg has been alive since the beginning of time. She is ageless and changeless, and has therefore had to travel nearly constantly and reinvent herself to avoid the wrath of us mortals.

    Trouble is, The Ortberg has a linguistic bent. Thus you can trace her, if you know where to look, through her influence on languages throughout the ages. This series is merely her nibbling ’round the edges at Modern English.

    My evidence? Chaucer, Shakespeare, and all of modern German.