From "The Dish." Doggie Suicides?

Robert:

If it seems that today's press is obsessed with the silly and trivial (Lindsey Lohan, et al), it was no better in the late 1800s, apparently. Inexplicably, there was this belief that dogs routinely committed suicde, and much "reporting" was done on this supposed common phenomenon.

I suppose there simply weren't as many goofy, drunk celebrities back then to write about. So "dog suicides" came in handy to fill the pages.

Today's "The Dish" blog quotes John Patrick Leary on how newspapers reported on them:

Dog suicides in 1898 were always male. The suicides were usually expressions of a fragile emotional state. Like [J.P Morgan's prize bulldog "His Nibs"] their humiliation was provoked by a neglectful family, an unkind mob, or by abuse from boys, women, or cats. Sarah Knowles Bolton, in the 1902 book Our Devoted Friend, The Dog, devoted an entire chapter to dog suicides. For example: Rex, a prize-winning Gordon Setter, was worth $300 and drowned himself after he was kicked on the head by a private watchman. Most suicidal dogs were pure-bred, which presumably led to their emotional fragility: a $10,000 dog in Boston deliberately drowned himself, writes Bolton, after he was devastated by an insult from a thoughtless kennel-keeper.

It was the New York World who declared the end of “His Nibs” a “suicide.”