When I was writing The Butterfly Cage, my dear old dog Grendel was in the process of dying. He was a big, sweet black lab who had once belonged to my ex. When my ex died in 2019, I took the dog and gave him a home. He was the most loving dog I ever knew — also the sheddingest! Every day I had to vacuum great balls of fur!

Perhaps Grendel (yes, he was named after the monster in Beowulf!) was on my mind when I gave one of the heroines in The Butterfly Cage a dog. What I didn’t realize is that dog shows were a big thing among the upper classes at that time (fall 1913), and so the dog show in Lenox Massachusetts became an important part of the plot.

During my research, I I found an article in the New York Times about the show in September of 1913. I love the names of the winners:
The Best Dog — Stumber (an old English sheepdog)
Best Dog of the Opposite Sex, what an odd category! — Parkneuk Blackthorn (a Pomeranian)
In the Mastiff class, the winners were British Monarch and the Countess of Britain!
The best local dog was a French bulldog named Gamin. Here’s a picture from the Washington Post along with a fascinating article about the popularity of dog shows back in the day!

You can probably see how easy it was for me to go down that rabbit hole! The dog in The Butterfly Cage was a golden cocker spaniel named Beauregard Vrai Amour. While he didn’t win the show because his mistress, Caroline, was busy being abducted, he did wind up saving the day.

One of the interesting facts I discovered as I did my research was that there were very few veterinarians for pets at the time. And some of the first small animal veterinarians were women! According to “The History of Women in Veterinary Medicine, in “1910 Elinor McGrath, Chicago Veterinary College, and Florence Kimball, Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, graduated with their veterinary degrees. Both women chose a type of veterinary practice that was uncommon at the time—they were small animal veterinarians.”

I happen to have a woman veterinarian for my chihuahua, Franco, and for my cat, Tumbleweed. She’s terrific.

If you haven’t yet read The Butterfly Cage I hope you’ll give it a try!

Book recommendation:

I read Dog Medicine by Julie Barton years ago. It’s a memoir and, wow, is it powerful! If you love dogs, you’ll want to read this!