“Woo” The Dogman, and Moving the Goalposts

       


 (Yes, the Dogman is spooky, and by god if it’s real I have never seen a better justification for the Second Amendment


        

                 Anyone who knows me, either in person or through following me online, should have an idea that I don’t really subscribe  to “woo” and the paranormal, especially when it intersects with history or cryptozoology, and oftentimes both. What is “woo”? It’s sort of a catch all term that encompasses all sorts of paranormal and other strange ideas surrounding Bigfoot (and it’s various regional counterparts). It seems that in the cryptozoological community there is a sub culture that increasingly rejects more science based cryptozoology and embraces the paranormal in an effort to explain things. The explanations run the gamut, Bigfoot can shape shift, Bigfoot can phase and in and out like “Predator” (where’s Arnold when you need him? Am I right?). Bigfoot can go into portals, it’s a third dimensional being, it’s an alien, you name it. There seems to be an endless line of excuses for why cryptozoologists and other investigators have not turned up the kind of evidence needed to prove Bigfoot exists. Cue the non scientific arguments.


So why do people come up with these sorts of theories? I believe it is pretty self evident. As science and science minded cryptozoologists  investigated Bigfoot throughout the years, and came up with little evidence that was considered compelling by mainstream scientists, some Bigfoot devotees had a choice. Three choices really. Choice one, say “we haven’t found any good enough scientific evidence YET!”and continue the search. Choice two is admit  that there likely was not going to be any scientific evidence because the likelihood of Bigfoot being real is about as good as my chances of winning the powerball tonight.(but I’m still gonna play the powerball tonight, and I still would love for Bigfoot to be out there.) The final option, that many people in the “woo” camp seem to have taken, is to explain it away. Not very many good photos?  We can’t take good pictures of Bigfoot because he can phase in and out of reality. No bodies or fossils? They only visit our dimension. And the list goes on. Obviously it’s problematic, can’t find evidence? Just move the goalpost and make something up.


The people who subscribe to more “woo” with Bigfoot often, but not always, subscribe to “Dogman” as well. What is Dogman? Well, quite literally what it sounds like. A dog that looks like a man, or it it a man that looks like a dog? Anyway, Dogman stories originated in the upper Midwest of the United States. It’s worth noting that the upper midwestern US has a lot of Americans of German descent, (including me, I’m from Illinois and I’m a ‘Stucker’ on my mothers  side.) It should also not be considered a coincidence that Germanic people have traditions of werwolf stories, and werewolf descriptions look damnably  similar to Dogman descriptions. 


Dogman is described as a bipedal canine like creature that reminds people of werwolves, and the most fantastic stories go a few steps further, they describe it as a hyper violent bipedal dog like creature with a penchant for bloodshed that is the stuff of nightmares. I remember when I first came across Dogman stories in the late 2000s and it seemed like most Cryptozoologists at the time simply brushed the stories off and said “well, maybe they saw a Bigfoot”. But now Dogman is mainstream, and seems to be everywhere. Since Dogman has no readily available parallel in either the animal kingdom or fossil record (at least that I am aware of) the theories of what the Dogman is run rampant and are almost always firmly in the paranormal. Think things like “It’s a government experiment”, “it’s a werwolf”,” it’s a demon”, etc.


I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Dogman does not exist. I know that can be a “no no” in the cryptozoological community, but I have to say it. There isn’t even a chance it exists. Unlike the Bigfoot/ape man stories from all over the world, there is no historical precedent for a bipedal canine ever existing on the face of the earth, nothing in the fossil record, nothing in the animal kingdom remotely similar. Whereas with other cryptids there are at least somewhat similar  analogues in the fossil record and in the past and sometimes even living today.


When witnesses see a Dogman they describe a tall bipedal creature that had a long snout that does not look like a man. I believe that if they saw anything they probably saw a bear standing on two legs, bears have a long snout like many dogs do. Obviously those sorts of descriptions don’t  fit into the description for Bigfoot, and that creates problems. Rather than admit that these witnesses could have made a mistake identifying what they were looking at and say they had misidentified a bear, many cryptozoologists and report takers instead went along with the “Dogman” idea.


Why go with something new? Two reasons. Firstly, many people in the cryptozoological community fall into the open minded trap. There is such a fierce devotion to being open minded in the community that all ideas, regardless how far fetched they may seem, are considered equally possible. This readiness to accept all points of view as equally valid stems from the scorn that many cryptozoologists feel they faced from the scientific community. Think something along the lines of “well science rejected my ideas out of hand and I didn’t like that, so I won’t do that to anyone else ever.” This train of thought, maybe well intentioned, ignores the rules of science. Scientists did not reject a lot of cryptozoologists and their ideas because they felt like it, they rejected them because a lot of cryptozoologists aren’t doing science, they are doing something else. In  the name of being open minded, many cryptozoologists and researchers are SO open minded  that they’ll  accept just about anything as at least plausible. 

( Think things like portals, cloaking, angels, demons, aliens, infrasound, spirits, you name it.)


The second reason, somewhat related to the first, is that openly admitting to the witness, the community and the public that they probably saw a bear would throw all other eyewitness reports into doubt as well. When a community views eyewitness testimony as sacrosanct and infallible, something must be done when eyewitness testimony does not neatly fit into any current category. If you say that some eyewitness testimony is valid because it fits into the other evidence, but you reject other eyewitness evidence because it’s too far out there or easily explained as something else, then you aren’t being very open minded are you? You have two choices, write it off as mistaken identity  or misidentification, or, since you believe witnesses can’t possibly be mistaken or even lying, assume they must have seen something new  and create a new category. 


The “Dogman” phenomenon is a  result of these moving goalposts. People who thought they saw Bigfoot described something that could too easily be interpreted as a misidentified  bear. Rather  than commit the sin of disregarding eyewitness testimony some researchers, in a part of the country that was heavily influenced by German stories of werewolves, created the Dogman. I don’t believe that they purposely lied and created the Dogman from thin air with maliciousness. There is a culture of placing a heavy weight in favor of witness testimony, and since some people are predisposed to believe that something is out there, coupled with the fact that Dogman gives them a chance to explain alot of weird, but not quite Bigfoot style reports with something other than the mundane, it’s easy to see how things can sort of get carried  away. 

 

Science has rules, cryptozoology is like the Wild West, anarchist version of science sometimes. When scientists can’t find evidence for something they either continue looking using the same tools and toolbox, maybe with different approaches to the problem, or they accept the lack of evidence as proof enough and let it alone. It seems that all too often with cryptozoology the lack of evidence doesn’t encourage people to double down on the science, but they move the goalposts with off the wall theories explaining why they can’t find the evidence. Dogman is one of those goalposts that was moved. Bigfoot reports didn’t sound like a Bigfoot, so,a whole new Cryptid was created to explain it. Dogman works because it’s scared, it grabs the imagination, it ignites a primal sense of man vs nature. It’s just cool. But it’s not a real Cryptid, I don’t believe it has any chance to be. But if you bring me a Dogman in a cage I’ll eat my belt. That’s a promise. 


Comments

  1. I started seeing this trend around 2010 where cryptids were more likely to have supernatural qualities. Around 2013, I wrote about why I think that was happening and I labeled it "supernatural creep". It tracks with what you also found. I reposted in 2018 https://sharonahill.com/2018/12/20/supernatural-creep/ Since then, things have REALLY gotten out of control. Science is only a token part of today's cryptozoology for most people. It's not practiced in any real sense except for a handful (like 3-4) people who publish with a scientific foundation.

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    1. I forgot to add -- it's not new. There were always those who thought this was paranatural. It's just become more prevalent again and popular.

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