Lately I’ve seen statements like these about the Republican nominee for governor, Dan Maes: “The guy has no business being dog catcher,” and “I wouldn’t vote for him for dog catcher.”
I’ve used the term in this political context. In 1992, I referred to “anyone above the level of dog catcher,” and a year earlier, to “every election from dog catcher to the White House.”
Let’s ponder the two political meanings of dog catcher: 1) The lowest elected office, and 2) A job so simple that only a total incompetent could fail at it.
As for the first, I’m familiar with small venues. I grew up in Evans, just south of Greeley, which had about 1,500 residents then. I lived in Pierce, north of Greeley, when it held 452 people. Kremmling, with about 1,000 residents, was the largest town in Grand County when I lived there 35 years ago. Now I’m in a relative metropolis of 5,500.
I remember elections for town trustees and mayors, for municipal clerks and treasurers, for school boards and sanitation boards, for offices that have since been abolished like county school superintendent and county surveyor, but never for “municipal dog warden” or “county superintendent of canine control.”
I have pored through 19th century newspapers from our mining camps, where sometimes they elected constables (whose duties included rounding up stray drunks and donkeys), but never a dog catcher. As nearly as I can tell, dog catcher has never been an elective office in Colorado.
As to the job skills, when I worked in Breckenridge, I admired the labor-saving methods of the two dog catchers. One explained to me that they’d find a bitch in heat — either in the pound or running loose at the start of their patrol — and then troll the streets with her in the back of their truck. Unconfined male dogs came running and were easily picked up.
But obviously, the job isn’t always that easy, as you can tell from the “Animal Cops” show on the Animal Planet channel. So how did “dog catcher” become a political insult? The Oxford English Dictionary provided no help. But a contributor to that work, New York lawyer and etymologist Barry Popik, has found that in some jurisdictions in the 19th century, dog catchers were elected, although “it was the lowest position on the ballot.”
His earliest political reference is from the Feb. 26, 1889, edition of the Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky.: “An insolent Republican newspaper asserts that Mr. [lame-duck President Grover] Cleveland is so unpopular in Washington that he could not be elected dog-catcher for the district.”
In 1891, a Chicago newspaper referred to “a man who could not be elected dog-catcher in Kansas.” In another story a month later, that paper quoted someone saying “You could not be elected dog-catcher in your ward.”
Dog catchers have remained part of our political discourse. In part, I suspect that’s because they’re rather unpopular with dog owners, a large and vocal group that includes me. Even so, I quit using the term, and here’s why:
After I last used it in 1992, I got a letter from a woman in Adams County. Her husband, she wrote, was an animal control officer. It was hard work, occasionally dangerous, but he loved animals. His job made their community a safer and better place. So why was I demeaning dog catchers?
She was right. Dog catchers generally do improve our communities at some risk to themselves. So why insult them by comparing them to politicians?
Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
