When Adda Million embarked on a tour as a U.S. Foreign Service officer in 1989, her pet dog Dweezal joined her in trotting the globe. The beloved Maltese, whose full name was Dweezal Moon Million, survived rat poisoning in Frankfurt and saw a bit of history in Hungary when he encountered refugees from the Afghan War, before he was buried on the Sinai Peninsula while Million was serving in Egypt.
"He was more of a diplomat than anyone at the embassy," said Million, a Bethesda resident who is writing a book about Dweezal entitled "A Dog's Life in the Foreign Service."
Such singular pet stories going back to the 19th century are the focus of an exhibit, "The Other Member of the Family: Montgomery County Pets" at the Montgomery County Historical Society at the Beall-Dawson House in Rockville.
The collection focuses on the life of pets over the past century and how it has evolved from the pastoral to the urban. A hundred years ago most dogs, cats, chickens, horses and other members of domestic menageries slept in barns and wandered yards freely, were given chocolate and scraps of meat without hesitation, and generally received much less pampering than their counterparts today.
Roughly 100 individual pets are represented in the exhibit, which opened in late April and runs through September. They include Adam Mott's pony, a Christmas present that posed audaciously in the boy's front doorway at his Newlands Street home in Chevy Chase in 1950; a hissing cockroach that does in fact hiss, owned by Jessica Wolohojian of Poolesville; and the late Silver Spring resident Frank Heath's horse Gypsy Queen, which carried its owner on a tour of 48 states from 1925 to 1927 to raise money for the American Legion.
Susan B. Strange, a Potomac resident who contributed her cat Harley's cremated remains and cat oil paintings to the exhibit, said of her childhood in the 1950s, "I didn't know anyone who had a litter box. Cats just sort of came and went. They were not treasured pets like they often are today."
Even pets who weren't livestock, poultry or draft animals still sometimes contributed to the family welfare: hunting dogs were used in Rockville at least until the 1940s. The number of dogs due to the lack of spaying and neutering, meanwhile, prompted occasional rabies scares.
"The free puppy signs on the side of the road – you don't see that anymore," Strange recalled.
Veterinarian Richard Buckingham was considered so vital in the county that he was exempted from the military draft for World War II, and served the area from 1938 to 1991 as the focus of his practice shifted from large farm animals to small household animals. Before Buckingham's time, many pets were subjected to bizarre veterinary potions with names like "Balm of Life" and (ironically enough) "G.E.S.S." These were intended, incredibly, for both "man and beast."
"They probably weren't going to cure the people or the pets," said Joanna Church, who organized and oversees the exhibit for the Historical Society.
An item in "Peterson's Magazine" in 1867 even recommended lighting bird cages on fire — in order to clean them.
Even farm animals eventually headed for the chopping block or slaughterhouse were still considered beloved pets, crowding into black-and-white family photos, right up until their appointed destinies. Some of these destinies are located in the Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery, the second-oldest such cemetery in the United States that today is the eternal resting place of roughly 50,000 pets.
For some, the influence of pets continues more than half a century after they are gone, whether they are buried in Aspin Hill or the Sinai Peninsula. Million, who replaced Dweezal with two new Malteses, Romeo and Juliet Million, is convinced the pets in her Pennsylvania hometown gave her childhood friends a true bright spot in their lives.
"We always had little crazy animals around," Million said. "…I think if it hadn't been for our animals, I don't think all of us in our neighborhood would have grown up right.
