19. From Dog Lover to Dog Hater
As he wrote to a friend, Thomas Jefferson spent the eve of his departure from France: “[R]oving thro the neighborhood of this place to try to get a pair of shepherd’s dogs. We walked 10 miles, clambering the cliffs in quest of the shepherds, during the most furious tempest of wind and rain I was ever in“. He came across a human corpse in his journey, but no shepherd dogs. He lucked out the next day, however, and bought “a chienne bergere big with pup“. In Paris, Thomas Jefferson had been an avid dog lover. But his erstwhile love of dogs turned to outright hatred. He came to loathe them so much, that he called for the extermination of the entire species.
Jefferson was quite proud of his dogs when he got back home to Monticello, his plantation near Charlottesville, VA. He boasted of their herding skills, and before long, friends were writing him to ask for a pup from the next litter. However, Jefferson was one of those types who demanded strict and complete obedience. When one of his dogs proved obstinate, his views on dogs in general underwent a complete change. His reaction to one dog’s disobedience was to kill all his dogs. He also ordered his foreman to rid the plantation of dogs and kill all the slaves’ dogs as well. Eventually, he advocated for the complete eradication of all dogs everywhere. As he put it in a letter to a fellow dog hater in 1811: “I participate in all your hostility to dogs, and would readily join in any plan for exterminating the whole race“.
