We all know our animal companions can see things we don't.  From St. Nicholas magazine, 1898.

From The Ingoldsby Legends by Thomas Ingoldsby, 1881.

From The Pink Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, 1897.

"He moved his walking-stick repeatedly through the phantom," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

From The Yellow Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, 1906.

A class in mesmerism?  From Stories in Rhyme for Holiday Time, written by Edward Jewitt Wheeler and illustrated by Walter Satterlee, 1884.

This is how to spell coyote.  From B. C. 1887: A Ramble in British Columbia by James Arthir Lees. 1888.

As we noted in the special one-letter words edition of The Shakespeare Papers (revealed here), R is the dog's letter.   Romeo and Juliet aside, we find a canine T in Outing magazine, 1885.

The phrase "words can hurt dogs" is a Googlewhack.  Here's a dog named "Ugly" from Lights and Shadows in a Canine Life by Mrs. Hilliard, 1873.

From Le Physionomiste by Giambattista della Porta, 1808.

It may not be quite as exciting as the prediction of flying cars and colonies on Mars, but here's "the bull-dog of the future," from Prose and Verse by William James Linton, 1836.

Here's Toto, 70 dog years before the debut of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  From Home Life on an Ostrich Farm by Annie Martin, 1890.

"And make the puppy dance a jig, / When he began to quote Augustine."  From Every-day Characters by Winthrop Mackworth Praed and illustrated by Cecil Charles Windsor, 1896.

"Under the Mistletoe": an illustration from an 1885 issue of Little Wide Awake magazine.

An illustration from Snarleyyow by Frederick Marryat (1897).  The caption reads: "Vanslyperken bent over the cur and kissed it again and again."

This glowing dog manifests itself in Captain Marryat's Novels by Frederick Marryat, 1896.

"The inside dog generally starts it," as we learn in While the Billy Boils by Henry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson, 1897.

In the famous nursery rhyme, the little lamb gets all the credit for following Mary everywhere, but this 1896 illustration sets the record straight: Mary's sheepdog deserves some acclaim for directing the action.