A dog who dances like Fred Astaire in the moonlight, revels in a Germanic background and boasts about a Houdini-like ability to escape, Dixie may be tiny, but she’s proud. Or is it “he”? Peter Himmelman will only say that “Dixie is a very soulful animal, able to find joy in the minutiae of life.”
 
A composite of a several Dachshunds Himmelman has known, “Dixie” trots along with nimble phrasing, “mimicking a dog’s thought patterns.” Though it was released online only, it’s one of Himmelman’s most-requested live songs.
 
“When I perform it, I really feel dog-like,” Himmelman confesses. “Like this small, brown, coarse-haired dog who’s very sharp, very observant. I’m channeling what this dog might be seeing and thinking.”
 
When he’s not method acting, Himmelman makes music for both adults and children (the Grammy-nominated kids’ album My Green Kite is his latest), and scores the TV shows Men in Trees and Bones. He’s penned two other canine-inspired tunes, “Willa” and “Theo,” but it’s “Dixie” that touches the underdog in all of us. “It’s a song for everyone who feels like they’re not as good as other people,” Himmelman says.
 
Lester
Composed by Neil Finn
Recorded by Neil Finn
Released 2000
 
“It was written in honor of our family dog,” New Zealander Neil Finn says. “Lester was a Dalmatian, and when he was a year old, he was hit by a car. He nearly didn’t make it. I got home from the vet’s that day and wrote this song.”
 
In this plaintive acoustic ballad, which is featured on Afterglow, a Crowded House rarities collection, Finn promises to be a better person if Lester is allowed to live, while expressing thanks for the dog’s “good luck and strong bones inside and behind him.”
 
Finn wrote with such compassion that his producer, Mitchell Froom, mistook Lester for a human. “I didn’t tell him it was about my dog, and he thought I was talking about my manservant,” Finn says with a chuckle. Lester went on to star in several Crowded House and Finn Brothers videos, and was reportedly the inspiration for another Finn song, “Black and White Boy.”
 
Gimme Back My Dog
Composed by Brent Best
Recorded by Slobberbone
Released 2000
 
“It was mine before I met you,” sings Brent Best about the dog who’s the unwitting rope in a breakup tug-of-war.
 
“I remember writing it in my head while I was mowing my parent’s lot in Lucas, Texas,” Best says. “We had recently lost our family dog. Scooter was an old Dachshund and thought he was much bigger than he was. One night, he went after some coyotes. They made short work of him. I’d also been through a really bad breakup, so somehow, it all meshed together as one thing. The dog ended up representing all the things that you have in place before you enter a relationship, and then you don’t have in place when things go wrong.”
 
The song, one of the now-defunct Slobberbone’s most popular, grabbed the ear of novelist Stephen King, who name-checked it in Black House, and later called it one of the “three greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time.” (The group took their name from a doggie chew toy.)
 
Best, who now fronts alt-country band The Drams, recalls, “A friend once said, ‘This will be the song that will end up driving you mad because people will want to hear it all the time.’ And he was right.”
 
Lilly
Composed by China Forbes and Thomas Lauderdale
Recorded by Pink Martini
Released 2004
 
Girl and boy dog pass on the street. Eyes meet. Hearts and tails flutter. They go their separate ways, and boy dog is stricken forever. That’s the story in this playful salsa number.
 
Singer China Forbes says, “Lilly was inspired by my dog Foxy, and the male suitor was inspired by Thomas’s dog Heinz. Basically, they had this really cute flirtation. Foxy is a Corgi/Papillon mix, so she looks like a little red fox. Heinz is this enormous yellow Lab mixed with St. Bernard. He had one of those enormous bones that was bigger than Foxy’s entire body. But Foxy would always get it away from him immediately when she came to visit, then totally terrorize him. So she became this femme fatale every time she saw Heinz, and had him wrapped around her tiny paw.”