I was charmed by the idea for this article because I have my own strange little movie problem. The author made me feel as though I'm not alone -- which seems to be the great reassurance our age craves. I've never noticed the flowers in movies or given a moment's thought to roses and daffodils blooming together on screen but nowhere else in the world -- no, with me it is the dogs. Directors are always using achronistic breeds or simply the wrong breed. It doesn't take that much research to get it right. Take Zephirelli's Jane Eyre. For some unknowable reason he turned Rochester's famous dog, Pilot, into a Belgian Tervuren, a breed not established until the quite recently (although the type might have been around in Jane's time). Why not go with something that fit the description in the book? "I beheld a great black and white long-haired dog, like the Gytrash in the lane." Hmm -- sounds to me like a Newf of the black and white variety or perhaps some charming mutt.

Directors also like to be confused about on the King Charles/Cavalier King Charles issue. I know it is a little knotted, but not something the human mind can't untangle. Directors like to strut their stuff by using a King Charles Spaniel to establish the time of the movie as being during the reign of King Charles. Seems like sound policy. The only trouble is that the spaniel of that time looked like the dog we now call the Cavalier King Charles -- a dog with a nose. The King Charles breed changed dramatically, after the reign of both the kings named Charles, when the fad set in for dogs with snub noses, short faces. So is it now anachonistic to use the dog we call a King Charles (nose like a Pekingnese) in a movie set in the period of the Kings Charles. Any glance at the art of the time should tell a props director that.

See, like Casey, I have my my own little -- I think they are called bugaboos. But now I know I am not alone...