Pictures of Anastasia with Jemmy, Shibzik, etc.

[Sarushka]

While we're on the topic...

Does anyone have a reliable source for Jemmy's gender? I only know that the canine corpse found in 1919 was female....

[nena]

If dog's gender found at Mine in 1919 was female, and if it was Jemmy, then it is more than obvious that Jemmy was female.

BUT, Anastasia, in letter(s) reffers to Jemmy as 'MOI' on April 28th 1918, not 'MOYA', and 'Moi's is said for expressing male gender, unlike in English 'My' may reffer to both genders. So it is logical that it was male. Dude, why those contradictions must happen...?

A.A. Tegleva:

I saw a dog that is extracted from the mine. This positive, Jimmy, a little dog of Anastasia's. It was her dog, which almost could not walk because she could not, for example, it is to climb the ladder, even the stairs inside the house. Anastasia always held her on her hands.

But simply Tegelva is repeating examination done by the Whites, who said that the dog was female.

[Holly]

Well, regardless of how she referred to her in a letter, the dog was Jemmy and the dog was female. Perhaps Anastasia referring to Jemmy as he/him was just an error? That happens a lot with pets. I'm not an expert on Russian grammar but is it possible that it was merely a mistake? Doesn't the use of "my" change with the subject of the sentence regardless of the gender of the speaker? Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.  =)

[NAOTMAA Fan]

As to the dogs body,  Pierre Gilliard identified it as Jemmy. As to the condition of Jemmy's  body when found , well it had spent most of that time frozen solid certainly. That would preserve it remarkably. It was placed there in high summer and retrieved in high summer, but we are talking about Siberia.

Siberian temperatures is usually the argument I use when trying to explain the remarkable condition of the dog's corpse. However, in the chapter entitled "The Corpse of a Female Dog" in Summers and Mangold's The File on the Tsar, it blathers on endlessly about how the dog's organs would have turned to mush after two weeks in water, and after a month or two the hair would have completely loosened from the skin (which you can see around the hind legs). However, if the body was able to become encased and/ or sunk into mud/ sediment at the bottom of the mine (which could be possible if it had been thrown in first and then had eleven bodies tossed on top of it), this easily could have acted as some kind of shield from the elements; frogs do the same kind of thing during winter months to hibernate and keep from freezing to death. If this had happened, the mud would have frozen in the mine, as well as any water, and preserved the dog in it's own natural refrigerator. The mine itself was only about 30 meters deep, so it's quite possible for freezing to have happened. In addition, winter cools a body of water and the river bed, leaving it near frigid temperatures throughout most of spring and into the summertime after it has thawed. This would have kept temperatures in the mine relatively cold. Most woolly mammoths found today are in the remarkable state of preservation because of the fact they were encased in mud or tar in the same manner. Here's an article about a baby mammoth which has been deemed one of the most well preserved/ intact mammoths to date: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/05/mammoths/mueller-text

Anyways, when all is said and done, I personally believe the corpse belongs to Jemmy, and that Jemmy died inside the cellar room on the night of the executions. As to the argument of Jemmy's gender, she is commonly referred to as male (at least in most books read throughout my earlier youth). I do however believe that most anecdotes taken from letters refer to the dog as female. I don't have any readily available of course. In any case the corpse, being a female, kind of brings an end to any dispute. I can also say that from the photograph, the dog looks very much like some kind of black/ toy breed/ spaniel: aka Jemmy who was a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel. Trust me, I know my dog breeds. I own about 30 of them : D