Dog Drama

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Dog Dramas. In the 1840s Barkham Cony and Edwin Blanchard introduced plays at the Bowery Theatre in which trained dogs took a significant part in the action: holding villains at bay, rescuing the heroine, or uncovering evidence that exonerates the hero. With titles such as The Planter and His Dogs and The Dogs of the Wreck, the plays soon became popular features at the theatre. When Cony and Blanchard separated at the end of the decade, Cony, with his young son Eugene and their dog Yankee, continued to appear at the Bowery in a number of specially written vehicles, among them The Cross of Death; or, The Dog Witness and The Butcher's Dog of Ghent. At the same time Blanchard, with his dogs Hector and Bruin, moved to the National Theatre, where they starred in The Watch Dogs, The Fisherman and His Dogs, and similar pieces. All through the 1850s and 1860s, dog dramas continued to be popular, especially in the less elite playhouses. Cony soon disappeared from the scene, but Blanchard found a new rival in Fanny Herring, who, with her dogs Lafayette and Thunder, performed in The Rag Woman and Her Dogs and other such plays. By the early 1870s the vogue for the genre had largely exhausted itself, while trained dogs found new opportunities on the rapidly multiplying vaudeville stages.