A man and his dog

J.R. Ackley writing about his German shepherd, Queenie, back in the 1950s:

Her ears are tall and pointed, like the ears of Anubis. How she manages to hold them constantly erect, as though starched, I do not know, for with their fine covering of mouse-gray fur they are soft and flimsy; when she stands with her back to the sun it shines through the delicate tissue, so that they glow shell-pink as though incandescent. Her face also is long and pointed, basically stone-gray, but the snout and lower jaw are jet black. Jet, too, are the rims of her amber eyes, as though heavily mascara’d, and the tiny mobile eyebrow tufts that are set like accents above them.

The excerpt is from a New Yorker article by Joan Acocella about Ackerly’s life. Anubis, by the way, is a jackal-headed god associated with mummification and the afterlife in Egyptian mythology.