Week 10 Storytelling - The Dog Husband

There was a girl who loved his dog. She had him around her all the time. One day, she got pregnant and her parents suspected that it was the dog that got her pregnant. They decided to burn the house and killed the dog and the daughter. They burnt their house to let their daughter and the dog to die in fire. But dog woke up before they both die. He turned into a human form and carried the girl away from the house.


"Where am I?"


When the girl woke up, nothing was left in the village. Everyone left. She was confused, but she had to move on for the sake of her babies. With the dog next to her, she moved to the place where she could start a new life.


"We need to start a new life here. You need to help me!"


She told her dog. The dog agreed that he would do anything for her. It was rough to start a whole new life but she had her dog to help her. The dog was always there for her and that all she needed.

Eventually, she gave birth to four male puppies and one female puppy. The dog and the girl were happy to see their child. However, more hunting and works had to be done by both. They both worked hard to feed their puppies until they grew up. When they were finally old enough to go hunt for whales, the dog taught their puppies.


"I think you are ready."


It was one night, the dog decided to teach puppies how to turn into the human form. He gathered all his puppies and transformed.


"You are my children. All of you can do this. All of you can have the form of human."


Five puppies were amazed by their father's transformation. However, they were not the only ones that saw his transformation, the girl, the mother of five puppies, realized that the dog could transformed that night.


"You can become a human? You are just like me? Why didn't you tell me about this? This..This..I wish you would have told me earlier!"


She scolded him and told him that if he stayed as a human from the beginning that everything would had been fine for them. The dog agreed. He told his puppies to stay as human forms as well. With their human bodies, the dog and puppies could hunt for whales more faster and better. They could catch more than enough, they shared the meat of whales to other animals and creatures around them.


One day, A crow told and brought people who left the village. They found out the dog and their puppies were great hunters that could catch enough whales for all of them. The village started to form around the house of the girl and the dog. Later the village got bigger and bigger and formed a great city. The dog, with his human form, became the master chief of the town while his children became chiefs of the town.


Author's note: This is a rewriting about the dog husband. The original story is about the girl who had the dog husband and her children. In the original story, the dog husband was killed by her parents. Therefore, the story was not really about the dog husband but it was about the wife and her puppies. The story is really similar. Her children learned how to hunt whales and eventually become the chiefs of the village which was formed by people who left the village earlier because a crow told them. I wanted to write the story about the dog husband that actually has the dog husband as a main character so title will be more relevant. I think this story was interesting but I think since the dog husband was the title of the tale, more of him should have been told in the story instead of killing him in the beginning of the story.

(The dog and the girl by Hartwig HKD)

Bibliography : The Dog-Husband from Marriage Tales from Stith Thompson's anthology, Tales of the North American Indians.

Week 10 Reading Diary - Marriage Tale

For the second part, I picked The Dog-Husband as my reading diary. I usually like the story that I read for this class, but this story was interesting yet a little weird. First of all, the name of the story is The Dog-Husband, but in this story dog husband only appeared at the beginning of the story.


"After a time she became pregnant, and when her parents found it out and knew that the dog was the cause, they were greatly ashamed and, calling the people together, they tore down the house, put out all the fires, and moved away from the place, leaving the girl to die."

I was shocked how they dealt with bestiality so casually, but that was the last scene for a dog husband. Rest of the story was about how the girl gave birth to five puppies, one female and four males, and how she tried everything to raised her children.

"Not long after this she gave birth to five dog pups, but as her father had killed the dog, her lover, she had to look after them by herself, and the only way she could live and care for them was to gather clams and other shellfish on the beach."

Then they realized that they could stay as human forms which would allow them to be more acceptable to community. At the end, they became the chiefs of people and a village because they stayed as humans and they knew how to haunt for whales.

"Then the people talked it all over and decided to go back, and they loaded their canoes and moved to the old village. And the boys became the chiefs of the village, and always kept the people supplied with whales."

Basically, the story is not about dog husband but it is more about dog children. If this story wanted to have a title for dog husband, they should have talked more about dog husband. I think I will rewrite so that dog husband is actually alive, so the story will be actually about dog husband.

(Dog by Jeff Ro)

Bibliography : The Dog-Husband from Marriage Tales from Stith Thompson's anthology, Tales of the North American Indians.

Week 10 Reading Diary Marriage Tales

I have decided marriage tales for my reading for this week. The interesting thing about this story is characters from Tales are animals. Out of all wonderful stories from the first part of the Marriage Tales, the one that I like the most was The Eagle and Whale Husbands.


This story was interesting because two human girls also appeared in the story. I like how two girls were introduced to their animals. From the paragraph one, two girls claimed an eagle and a whale as their husbands. "one of the girls said, "I will have an eagle for my husband," and the other replied, "Thou mayst rejoice that thou hast already got a husband; I will have a whale for mine." It was interesting that both the eagle and the whale came up to the shore and took one to the sky and the other one to the bottom of the sea.


It was so interesting they understood what girls were saying and immediately took them as their brides. I like from the human's perspective, the eagle was nothing but a kidnapper. "One day, when the eagle was away, she tried the length of it and found that it reached down to the level of the sea. Another day she saw a kayaker rowing along the shore and, when he came just below, she called out to him to send a boat to rescue her." So the eagle might have thought the girl wanted to marry him, but to a girl, the eagle was nothing but a scary creature. Later the eagle got shot and died.

I think the most shocking part of the story was that the eagle and the whales were not real but a spirit of the bones that girls were playing with. "Then she threw her long jacket and before he could overtake them again, they had already landed, but when the whale reached the shore he was transformed into a piece of whale-bone."

(Whale by Ken Bosma)

Bibliography : The Eagle and Whale Husbands from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson