Unusual pub name?

[Amilcar]

Not sure if this is the right section to ask (pls suggest another, if I'm wrong) but I am keen to know the origin of the pub name, "The Smoking Dog"...? I had a couple of pints in the one at Malmesbury, having been attracted by the beautiful illustration outside of a dog smoking a pipe. Subsequently, a friend asked one of the staff where the name came from. They told her that the pub had originally been, "The Greyhound," but the landlord had found a painting of a smoking dog in the pub cellar, I think, when he took it over and changed the name. No-one knew the origin of, "The Smoking Dog" himself. Is there some legend that might have led to the painting/pub name? Are there any other Smoking Dog pubs, elsewhere? I'd love to know....?

[brionon]

There is ,or was a Pub sign in Yapton of a White woman scrubbing a Black baby called ''the Labour in Vain,''

[Postdog]

I seem to remember a painting, maybe a series, that had dogs in as people, if you get my drift. The one image I do remember is them playing cards.

[fredpuli47]

The American artist, Cassius M Coolidge, painted hundreds of paintings of dogs doing manly things, like smoking pipes , playing poker and so on. They were works with a marked satirical edge but loved by the public for their sheer absurdity.His most famous work 'A Friend in Need' shows dogs playing poker. Two little dogs are cheating the other, big,ugly dogs. That's probably the work Postdog remembers.
The pub's picture may well have been a copy of one of Coolidge's pictures or inspired by him. He was not the only artist to draw humans as dogs but the most successful. He inspired a number of imitators when at the height of his fame, around the end of the C19.

[antonove]

Sorry to change the subject slightly but here goes:-

My local is called THE ARGYLL SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDER INN.

Are there any longer pub names?

[denis567]

There is a pub near to where I used to live called 'Hark to Mopsey'
Apparently, it used to go under another name ( I don't know what it was) but many years ago, the pub caught fire in the middle of the night and the dog belonging to the landlord started to howl, thus waking up the landlord and his family, and the pub was saved from destruction.
The dog's name was Mopsey, and 'hark' is an old word for 'listen' (remember the Christmas Carol 'Hark the Herald Angel sings'