Collection of Pet Photos Shows the Changing and Enduring Relationship of People and Dogs

Antiques and dogs have always been a part of Anthony Cavo’s life. His mother, a nurse, fell in love with antiques in the 1960s and became an antiques dealer and auctioneer. Cavo has fond memories of searching through attics, basements, abandoned buildings, crawl spaces, funeral parlors and even a caretaker’s cottage at a cemetery with his parents to acquire items for his mother’s two antiques shops in New Jersey.

It was on these antiques excursions that Cavo’s family acquired many of their dogs. Their pug, Winston, whose stud services were no longer needed and who was destined to be put down, came home with them along with an 18th-century Chippendale chest of drawers.

They found their schnauzer, Schatzi, while buying antiques at an estate where the owner had died. They heard whimpers from the basement, and the estate executor explained that no one wanted the dog left behind. Cavo’s mother didn’t hesitate to scoop up the frightened, undernourished dog and take him home.

Their rescues also included cats, doves, a goose no longer able to fly, a miniature Alpine goat and a parrot named Caesar. “No pet left behind,” Cavo said in the introduction of his book “Love Immortal: Antique photographs and stories of dogs and their people.”

So when Cavo was cataloguing his collection of old photographs several years ago, he was not surprised to find that he had gathered so many portraits of people with their dogs. He was fascinated by the relationships between them in the photographs, especially since the value of a dog in the 19th and early 20th century was often based on its usefulness to the owner.