Suburban United States
AA-2026-F36C71
On the image
She has put on a good dress to do this, which tells you everything about the priorities of a 1950s afternoon. The dog, a Springer Spaniel with the patient expression of an animal that has performed this trick eleven times already today, offers its paw with the resignation of a creature that has learned obedience is the price of dinner.
The woman bends at the waist rather than the knees, the posture of someone who has been told all her life not to crouch in a skirt, and grips the paw as though closing a business deal. Behind her a single spindly plant produces its improbable orange-red blooms against the aluminum siding, planted with more optimism than horticultural planning. This is not a dog show and no one is grading the performance, which is precisely why everyone involved is trying so hard.
Such backyard rituals were performed by the thousands across postwar suburbia, tiny ceremonies of mutual training between newly prosperous families and their newly acquired pets, each side convinced it was teaching the other something important.
The historian's note
The scene reflects a common domestic ritual of the postwar suburban expansion in the United States. Single-family homes with private lawns, previously uncommon for much of the population, became widespread through new housing developments built after the war, and pet ownership rose alongside them as a marker of settled family life.
The Springer Spaniel, a popular family and gun-dog breed throughout the mid-twentieth century, appears here in a domestic rather than sporting context, trained for a simple obedience trick rather than fieldwork. The woman's attire, a fitted floral shirtwaist dress with a cinched waist and flat shoes, is consistent with everyday American women's fashion of the 1950s.
The aluminum or vinyl clapboard siding visible behind the subjects was a standard exterior material for suburban tract housing of the period, valued for its low maintenance compared to painted wood.
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Teaching a Spaniel to Shake Hands, Suburban Backyard, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-F36C71. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/teaching-a-spaniel-to-shake-hands-suburban-backyard-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026F36C71,
title = {Teaching a Spaniel to Shake Hands, Suburban Backyard, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-F36C71},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/teaching-a-spaniel-to-shake-hands-suburban-backyard-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Teaching a Spaniel to Shake Hands, Suburban Backyard, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-F36C71 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/teaching-a-spaniel-to-shake-hands-suburban-backyard-1950s ER -
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