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From an article in the New Haven Daily Palladium, April 25, 1865.
The New Dog Fashion
One of the latest and most absurd freaks of fashion chiefly affects that favored class of the canine species--the poodle. The new kink is to give the the creature an artificial color--not in the face, with carmine and so forth, as Madame "corrects" her own little faults of complexion, but by a thorough application of paint or strong dyes that transforms the poor animal into a little monster of brilliant and varied hues. This strange fashion is, of course, of Parisian origin. Some months ago, when it began to be imitated a little in London, Punch signalied its appearance by the publication of some verses supposed to utter remonstrances of an unwilling victim to his color-mad mistress. Here is a portion of the unhappy animal's sorrowful plaint:
"Oh, Mistress! do not dye my hair
You own through dying too;
Tie up my tail wth ribbons rare,
But paint it not sky-blue.
Tis sad tohang a pea-green head,
A rose-hued tail to sway.
I feel 'were better to be dead
Than dying every day."
The fist cases of the new mania on this side of the water are already reported. New York, as usual, leads the enterprise of Americanizing the exotic monstrosity. A newspaper write in that city thus records an example that fell under his eye:
Coming down Fifth Avenue a few days since, on the east or fashionable side, as is our wont, we saw a little ahead of us a very fashionably dressed lady, green being the predominating color worn, and moving along at her side was what appeared an animated cabbage leaf with a red stem. Drawing nearer, what was our surprise to discover that this object was a short-legged long-haired poodle--its body, except the breast, which was left white, dyed a beautiful green, and his tail a fiery red! We still thought it must be an animated vegetable, until we gave the little being--superior in intelligence, perhaps, to its mistress--a gentle kick, which caused it to give an unmistakably canine yelp, whereupon we were satisfied of its species. So here, then, is a new wrinkle, and we shall soon see an elaborate sign on the front of some stately brown stone mansion, "Dogs painted, tails dyed, and legs colored on the shortest notice. Colors warranted not to run."
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