Every Mention of Dogs in The Goldfinch

What names the Goldfinch characters use to refer to Popper.

I'm still hyperfixating on this so I made some graphs about Popper's name.

“Because- what if that particular goldfinch (and it is very particular) had never been captured or born into captivity, displayed in some household where the painter Fabritius was able to see it? It can never have understood why it was forced to live in such misery: bewildered by noise (as I imagine), distressed by smoke, barking dogs, cooking smells, teased by drunkards and children, tethered to fit on the shortest of chains. Yet even a child can see its dignity: thimble of bravery, all fluff and brittle bone. Not timid, or even hopeless, but steady and holding its place. Refusing to pull back from the world.”

“‘Hi,’ I said, dropping my suitcase-occupied by Popchik who was pacing around my feet staunch geriatric figure eights of greeting.”

“Unfortunately I miscalculated the dose and awakened twelve hours later with vomit all over the bedspread and had to stagger downstairs still sick as a dog for a ten a.m. meeting with the IRS.”

“There had to be some much briefer, and simpler way to thank Hobie and say what I had to say: namely, that he shouldn’t feel bad, he’d always been good to me and done his best to help me, just as my mother and I had done our best to help this baby pitbull, who- it was actually a pertinent point, only I didn’t want to spin the story out too long- for all her sweet-tempered qualities had been incredibly destructive in the in the days leading to her death, she’d pretty much destroyed the whole apartment and ripped out sofa to pieces.”

“Dear Hobie, This is a hard letter to write and I’m sorry to be writing it. And, I don’t quite know how to say this but I guess what I’m thinking about is the sick puppy my mother and I found on the street in Chinatown. She was lying in the space between two garbage cans. She was a baby pit bull. Smelly, dirty. Skin and bones. Too weak to stand up. People just walking by her. And I got upset and my mother promised me that we’d pick her up if she was still there when we finished eating. And when we got out of the restaurant, there she was. So we hailed a cab, I carried her in my adjacent and when we got her home my mother made her a box in the kitchen and she was so happy and licked our faces and drank a ton of water and ate the dog food we bought her and threw it all right back up.

“The man who sloped up to the glass door of the cafe was a scrawny, sketchy, twitchy-looking guy in his sixties, with a long narrow face and long freak hair past his shoulders and a peaked denim cap straight from Soul Train 1975. He stood there with his ring of keys and looked past Victor to me and Gyuri and seemed undecided whether to let us in. His close-set eyes, his brushy gray eyebrows and his puffy gray moustache gave him the look of suspicious old schnauzer dog.”

“The sun had come out and there was something hard and bright by the canals, a breathable glitter. Gulls plunged and cried. A dog ran by with a live crab in its mouth.”

“In his overcoat and suit from the previous night’s party he looked both completely out of place and completely at home. ‘What a dog’s weather! Shall we duck in here? Do you think?’”

“What I somehow hadn’t expected was a city prinked-up for Christmas: fir boroughs and tinsel, starburst ornaments in the shop windows and cold stiff wind coming off the canals and fires and festival stalls and people on bicycles, toys and colour and candy, holiday confusion and gleam. Little dogs, little children, gossipers and the watchers and package bearers, clowns in top hats and military great coats and a little dancing jester in Christmas clothes a la Avercamp.”

“While Antony circled the block, I ran into the shop and grabbed all the unbanked cash in hand without counting it, somewhere in the neighbourhood of sixteen thousand. Then I ran upstairs and- while Popper paced and circled, whining with anxiety- threw a few things into my bag: passport, toothbrush, razor, axis, underwear, first pair of suit trousers U found, couple of extra shirts, sweater. The Redbreast Flake tin was was at the bottom of my sock drawer and I grabbed it too and then dropped it and shut the drawer on it, quick.

“And how terribly she wanted a dog, but of course it was hard in London with the quarantine which they had in Switzerland too, and how did she always end up living in all these dog unfriendly places?”

“By the time I got off the F train, the sky was turning pale. Dragging home in the bitter colds depressed, dead tired, letting myself in at the side door, trudging up to my room, smudged-up glasses, reeking of smoke and sex and curry and Kitsey’s Chanel No.19c stopping to greet Popchik, who had bundled down the hall and was looping- the loop with unusual excitement at my feet, pulling my rolled necktie out of my pocket so I could hang it on the rack on the back of the door- my blood almost froze when I heard a voice from the kitchen: ‘Theo? Is that you?’

“To imagine it being shoved behind a pizza oven was enough to make my idolater’s heart pound with a different, but similar version of the terror I’d felt when I thought the driver was going to chuck poor Popper off the bus: in the rain, in the middle of nowhere, out by the side of the road.”

“All sorts of things were coming back to me, such as the moment a few months before when I’d walked in on Mrs.Barbour and heard her saying in a low urgent voice to the doorman, over the intercom, in an answer to a ring from the lobby: No, I don’t care, don’t let him up, keep him downstairs. And when Kitsey, not thirty seconds later, after checking her texts, had bounced up and announced unexpectamtly she was taking Ting-a-Ling and Clement for a spin round the block! I hadn’t thought about it, despite the unmistakable frost of displeasure that had crossed Mrs.Barbour’s face, and the renewed warmth and energy with which- when the door clicked shut after Kitsey- she had turned back to me and reached to take my hand.”