Dog Hearted: Essays on Our Fierce and Familiar Companions

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The Heart of a Dog (1925) is a short blast against the ‘New Soviet Man’ – a comment on the declining power of Communism and the changing tides in the Soviet power structure, which up until then, had been an excruciating series of proletarian rebellions and bourgeois sanctions. Can you say "Booby Brash Bolsheviks" three times fast, comrades? If not, you can surely howl with laughter. Ooow-ow-ooow-owow!

He's concerned about me, thought the dog. A very good man. I know who he. He is a wizard, a magician, a sorcerer out of a dog's fairy tale..." También nos dice que ciertos "experimentos" como fue el comunismo soviético fue algo que tarde o temprano tendría un mal final. Tatiana Bateneva. In the quest for longevity humans are ready to become relatives with any animals (in Russian)Fatter than he is’ seems wrong, based on the other two, but dropping the witch business and just talking about a ‘terrible snowstorm’ makes for a much more natural-sounding English style. Meanwhile in the US, the most common translation seems to be the Mirra Ginsburg one published by Grove Press, which in my opinion is rather poor.

Heart of a Dog is, before anything else, FUN. It's just really damn entertaining. We start with a sort of Woody Allen neurotic type stream of concsiousness narrative from a stray dog, Sharik, who is swooped up by doctor Preobrazhensky. The doctor, aiming for notoriety, removes the dog's testicles and pituitary glands and replaces them with those of a deceased man. Bake for a few days and voila! Your monster is ready, monsieur! Professor Preobrazhensky and his assistant, doctor Bormenthal, intend to conduct a cutting-on-edge experiment on the mongrel. If things work well, the experiment will create a new man, no less. We watch how their ambitious plan plays itself out.

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It was a fun read and I took three days to complete reading the book, and would have actually finished it in one sitting as I did not want to put it down, but life intervenes. Being a lover of verse, I was happy to see Lord George Gordon Byron’s ‘Epitaph to a Dog’ included. This heartfelt tribute is a gem and all dog lovers will agree that every word is true. Part of this epitaph reads: “But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend, Whose honest heart is still his Master’s own…”