Bob Dylan’s dogs get less attention than his Nobel Prize, Pulitzer, ten Grammys and Oscar, but they were with him just as long. He has spent his entire life surrounded by dogs, and once wrote a song called “If Dogs Run Free.” For all the talk of him as the great American poet, he is, at heart, a dog person.
A songwriter who actually lived with dogs
From his earliest recordings onward, dogs (and cats) have been everywhere in Dylan’s life, on album art and off it, never as props. It puts him in good company: like Pink Floyd and Cat Stevens, the most serious musicians often turn out to be the most serious dog people.
“If Dogs Run Free”
Tucked onto his 1970 album New Morning is a loose, scat-jazz daydream called “If Dogs Run Free.” It is barely two minutes long and sounds improvised, a philosophy of freedom delivered as if a dog off the leash had written it. Decades later, illustrator Scott Campbell turned it into a children’s picture book, which is exactly the second life that song deserved.
The dogs who earned their own awards
Humans hand their biggest honours to other humans. When Dylan took the 2016 Nobel in Literature, this dog could not help noticing the four-legged talent that never gets a statue. Rin Tin Tin carried whole silent films. Uggie stole The Artist. And here in India, Zanjeer, a Labrador with the Mumbai police, sniffed out arms and explosives after the 1993 blasts and saved countless lives, then was buried with full honours. Dylan would understand. He has always known the best company does not talk back.
So yes, dogs love Bob Dylan, and the feeling is mutual. See where his canine peers landed in our roundup of the best songs about dogs. And if the man who wrote “If Dogs Run Free” taught us anything, it is to let one run free in your home. Please adopt, don’t shop.
In a demo of every grain of sand, you can clearly hear Bob’s dog barking throughout. It’s a great duet. Cheers!
I shot a great pic of Bob with his beagle on his lap, at the wheel of his tour bus after the early show of The Rolling Thunder Review, in Rochester, NY. I was a local radio DJ and had backstage access. Never published the shot.