AA-2026-B4DAB6
On the image
Someone in the back seat had the presence of mind to roll down a window and aim the camera at the road ahead, where two white, heavy-coated dogs were sprinting flat out in front of the bumper. This was the accepted way to exercise a dog in the 1950s: let it out at the top of the hill and let it run the car home, on the working theory that any dog fast enough to stay ahead of a Ford was safe enough to be there.
The road itself is a minor rural artery, paved but narrow, edged with a low whitewashed guardrail of the kind towns installed once and then maintained forever, and lined with maples already turning for the season. Nobody in this photograph is thinking about leash laws, because leash laws for a scene like this did not meaningfully exist yet, and a loose dog on a back road was simply a dog being a dog.
Both animals have their ears back and tongues out in the specific ecstasy of an animal that has been let off some invisible tether, oblivious to the fact that a second, slower car idles just visible at the curve behind them, waiting its turn to be outrun.
Visually related — by likeness
Two Dogs Racing the Car Down a Country Road, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-B4DAB6. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/two-dogs-racing-the-car-down-a-country-road-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026B4DAB6,
title = {Two Dogs Racing the Car Down a Country Road, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-B4DAB6},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/two-dogs-racing-the-car-down-a-country-road-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Two Dogs Racing the Car Down a Country Road, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-B4DAB6 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/two-dogs-racing-the-car-down-a-country-road-1950s ER -
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