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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lorn

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Speaker 1: vogelbaumb Here. During the fifteen hundreds, dogs were more than

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Speaker 1: just companions. There was a dog breed for nearly everything,

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Speaker 1: the herding sheep, tracking wild game, and even warming up

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Speaker 1: cold laps on chilly days. But in Wales and beyond,

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Speaker 1: there was a dog that found a role in the

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Speaker 1: kitchens of homes large and small. He was known as

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Speaker 1: the turnspit dog or spit dog. They had long, stocky

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Speaker 1: bodies and short legs, and their job was to turn

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Speaker 1: the wooden wheel that would spin the roasting spit in

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Speaker 1: the hearth before the arrival of the automated roasting spit.

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Speaker 1: Open fire roasting meant that the spit had to be

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Speaker 1: cranked continually by hand for evenly cooked meat. The task

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Speaker 1: often fell to the lowest ranking member of a kitchen staff,

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Speaker 1: as it was miserable work. That is, until someone figured

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Speaker 1: out that you could make a dog do it. The

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Speaker 1: small cooking dog was bred to run on a wheel

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Speaker 1: like a hamster wheel. There was attached to a chain

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Speaker 1: that would turn the roasting spit. This canine innovation was

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Speaker 1: hailed as a major life improvement The first mention of

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Speaker 1: the turnspit dog dates from fifteen seventy six, in the

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Speaker 1: earliest book on dogs in the English language, called of

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Speaker 1: English Dogs. And the turnspit dog wasn't just popular in Britain.

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Speaker 1: Their breeding continued for a few centuries, and they made

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Speaker 1: the trek from Great Britain to North America. Since they

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Speaker 1: were pandy for more than just roasting meat, they were

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Speaker 1: also used for other domestic tasks like churning butter, pressing fruits,

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Speaker 1: pumping water, and milling grain. However, they never gained the

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Speaker 1: same popularity here. In kitchens, turnspit dogs wheels were mounted

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Speaker 1: high up on the wall and well away from the

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Speaker 1: fire to prevent them from overheating, but it still would

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Speaker 1: have been exhausting work. The dogs were considered machinery, not

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Speaker 1: pets because it was so labor intensive. Many turnspit dogs

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Speaker 1: would work in pairs, trading off on the meat spinning

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Speaker 1: hamster wheel, and some think that that tag team is

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Speaker 1: the origin of the phrase every dog has his day.

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Speaker 1: Later on, in the eighteen fifties, the dog's treatment in

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Speaker 1: Manhattan hotel kitchens partially inspired the founding of the Society

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Speaker 1: for the Prevention of cruelty to animals. A back in

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Speaker 1: Britain on Sundays, the dogs may have gotten a bit

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Speaker 1: of a break when their owners took them to church.

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Speaker 1: They were considered useful as footwarmers too. The dogs were

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Speaker 1: popular there for centuries a. Shakespeare and Darwin both wrote

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Speaker 1: about them. In seventeen fifty, there were turnspit dogs everywhere

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Speaker 1: in Britain, but by eighteen fifty they were hard to find,

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Speaker 1: and by nineteen hundred that all but disappeared, mostly because

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Speaker 1: of the invention of spit turning machines called clock jacks.

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Speaker 1: This new technology ultimately unleashed turnspits and led to the

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Speaker 1: breed's extinction. With the invention of these cheap spit turning machines,

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Speaker 1: the small dogs just weren't needed anymore. Owning one became

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Speaker 1: a sign of poverty, and the dogs have been bred

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Speaker 1: to work, not to be cute or have fun dispositions.

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Speaker 1: No one really wanted to keep them as pets, so

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Speaker 1: today the turnspit dog is extinct. The only one that

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Speaker 1: survives is in a hunting lodge in an ancient Norman

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Speaker 1: castle in Wales. Granted, this one isn't working in the kitchens.

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Speaker 1: She's a taxidermy to turnspit dog named Whiskey. Her closest

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Speaker 1: dog relative is likely the Welsh Corgi, the pampered pooch

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Speaker 1: of the late Queen Elizabeth. The second Today's episode is

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Speaker 1: based on the article Turnspit Dogs the Elizabethan Kitchen gadget

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Speaker 1: bread to cook meat on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by

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Speaker 1: Kristen Conger. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership of

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Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler klang A.

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Speaker 1: Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the airheart Radio app,

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