Interesting Wikipedia articles for killing time and expanding your mind!!
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For Hundreds of Years a Small Dog was a Cook’s Dream Kitchen Gadget
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For hundreds of years the now-extinct turnspit dog, also called Canis Vertigus (“dizzy dog”), vernepator cur, kitchen dog and turn-tyke, was specially bred just to turn a roasting mechanism for meat. And weirdly, this animal was a high-tech fixture for the professional and home cook from the 16th century until the mid-1800s.
Edward Jessy included the turnspit dog in his 19th-century book Anecdotes of Dogs, and he remembered it well from his youth. “They were long-bodied, crooked-legged, and ugly dogs, with a suspicious, unhappy look about them, as if they were weary of the task they had to do, and expected every moment to be seized upon to perform it,” he reminisced.
Turnspit dogs came in a variety of colors and were heavy-set, often with heterochromatic eyes. They were short enough to fit into a wooden wheel contraption that was connected to ropes or chains, which turned the giant turkey or ham on a spit for the master of the house.
Edward Jessy included the turnspit dog in his 19th-century book Anecdotes of Dogs, and he remembered it well from his youth. “They were long-bodied, crooked-legged, and ugly dogs, with a suspicious, unhappy look about them, as if they were weary of the task they had to do, and expected every moment to be seized upon to perform it,” he reminisced.
Turnspit dogs came in a variety of colors and were heavy-set, often with heterochromatic eyes. They were short enough to fit into a wooden wheel contraption that was connected to ropes or chains, which turned the giant turkey or ham on a spit for the master of the house.
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The short, chubby, depressed cooking dog couldn’t escape her task for hundreds of years, but by the turn of the 20th century, animal rights activist groups made people question the decision to use a living, suffering dog as a kitchen gadget in the home. According to food historian William Woys Weaver, the treatment of Turnspit Dogs in an 1850s Manhattan hotel so angered activist Henry Berg that it inspired him to found the ASPCA.