Tag Archives: victorian era

ursula lecoeur

Were the 1880s the Golden Age of the Dog?

Reader Charles Padgett asked what sort of pets Americans owned during Victorian times. Short answer—birds, dogs and cats—in that order. Settlers arrived in America with dogs, cats and a penchant for caging songbirds. The first two  served useful purposes on the farm. Caged birds provided entertainment indoors. By the second half of the 19th century, […]

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