Swedish Pets from Long Ago

First, I doubt Foster has any Swedish in him. But he enjoys looking “vintage” in the front room, so I tried editing this image to make it look even more “vintage”.

We do have some vintage pet photos in our family, but not a lot. I really like this one, even though I had to look at it for a while before I could “see” the dog’s face as he’s looking up at my grandma Johnson with his chin in her hand. Something about the way he blends in, I guess. It took me even longer to notice the baby chicks in her lap. As long as I can remember, there have always been pets in my family.

While looking for people who might possibly be related to me on SwedishRoots.com, I have gotten sidetracked by a number of things, not the least of which being pets. There are a lot of pictures of children with pets, but quite a few adults had their portraits taken with pets also.

I was excited to find out that on this website, you can search photos by what is pictured in them. I thought at first that “YOKE” meant “SEARCH”, because every time I clicked on it, the results would pop up. But then I checked Google Translate and it seems to correlate with “OK”. Which makes more sense, when you think about it.

With all the pet photos out there, I tried to look for the ones that “jumped out at me” in some way. Sometimes it was the person’s facial expression, and sometimes it was the pet’s expression. The dog on the left is one of the more “engaged” pets I’ve found. On the right, what caught my eye was the little boy’s expression and the fact that the dog is sitting up.

Even puppies could get their portraits taken!

These look like fairly young kitties to me. Aren’t they being so good for their photo shoot?

You saw the photo on the left in “Mad About Plaid”. The cat on the right looks like it moved, because its face is a little blurry.

I like both of these for the girls’ outfits. What I like about the one on the right is that you can barely see the cat behind the little girl. It looks like a gray cat, which makes me wonder what color her dress was. You can see more cool vintage Swedish outfits in “Dressed for Success”.

Left: Another good candidate for “Mad About Plaid” and a kitty that looks like he wants down. Center: See how she’s holding her cat’s little paw? Right: I chose this photo because the lady has a pretty hairstyle and what appears to be a calm demeanor. Her kitty looks a bit bewildered, though.

Some of the dogs I found were pretty big, but they all looked calm and like they would be good with children. The one on the right looks like he could be an older pet, based on his white muzzle and wise expression.

Speaking of big dogs, this photo was kind of blurry, but I used it anyway because I thought it was really cute.

To me, these girls look like they (or their moms) color-coordinated their outfits with their dogs. The info for the one on the left said that “Betty Flykt, 1865” was written on the back. I have to wonder if someone misread the date, because her dress doesn’t look like the 1860s to me. 1885, maybe? Not that I would know, but spending hours sifting through these photos looking for long lost relatives online has at least given me a feel for clothing styles and what era they are from.

It wasn’t only women and children who posed with their pets. I have yet to find a man photographed with a cat, but I found plenty of men with a variety of dogs.

And not all the animals were dogs or cats! I had to run the information on this one through Google Translate, so I’ve included it here rather than try to paraphrase it. Depending on your device, you might have to zoom in.

Speaking of zooming in, imagine my surprise when I searched “one child and two pets” and found this adorable little girl with two baby chicks on the chair next to her!

Not to be outdone by baby chicks, other birds made the trip to the photo studio to pose with their humans. According to the information on the website, the lady on the right was an actress named Maria Pamela Georgina Hansson, and the bird she is holding is a nightingale. I tried Googling her, but the only hit was a link back to this same picture on Swedish Roots.

These were labeled “unknown cat” and “unknown kittens”, respectively. Something about that strikes me as humorous, though I’m not sure why. It looks like the kitten on the far right was getting bored, but his friend is blurry, so he was probably ready to jump up and grab whatever the photographer was using to get their attention. I think it’s amazing that the pet portraits in this post have survived all these years; in order to even be on Swedish Roots a photo has to be at least 100 years old. But it goes to show you that pets have always been an essential part of our lives.

Maybe someday a family historian, should there be one to come after me, will go through all my pictures of Foster and label them: Unknown Cat #1 – #1,000. . . and counting! Until then, find the hidden cat!