The short story starts like this: “By narrow mountain paths, from one villa to another, a small wandering troupe made their way along the southern shore of the Crimea. Ahead commonly ran the white poodle, Arto, with his long red tongue hanging out from one side of his mouth. The Poodle was shorn to look like a lion.”

The “White Poodle” is set in the 19th century and centers on a small wandering troupe comprised of an old organ-grinder Martyn Lodyzhkin, a twelve-year-old boy, Sergei, and a clever white Poodle named, “Arto.” The dog goes missing after a street show when the child of a member of the audience wants the dog, and won’t take no for an answer. What happens?  Read the story and you can say you read Russian literature. It won’t be one of the ten Russian novels to read before you die, but it’s sort of close.

It’s said that writers should write what they know, and certainly the White Poodle’s author, Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin, didn’t stray from the adage when he cast a Poodle as “Arto.”  The Russian writer had his own Poodle, a dog nicknamed “Negoday” (Scoundrel) at his country estate in Zhitomer.  Kuprin loved dogs so much that he was described as caring for them more than people. In his diary he wrote: “Dogs are increasingly humanizing lately before our eyes. But there are so many people all around resembling dogs and pigs… ” Presumably, he didn’t include his friend, Anton Chekhov (a Dachshund man), or Maxim Gorky (another dog man).

Image is of a vintage copy of the book from the 1980s which is available for purchase here.