So where's the dog?

[Brontodon]

When we first meet our heroes Holmes and Watson in "A Study in Scarlet," they are preparing to share rooms together in Baker Street.  In one scene, they are sharing with each other their own personal qualities that might be annoying to a prospective roommate.  The first thing that Watson tells Holmes about himself that he feels might qualify is that "I keep a bull pup."

So where is this dog in the Sherlock Holmes canon, other than this single mention?  I'm assuming Watson meant a dog (the modern definition of a bullpup is a type of firearm), and I don't see it mentioned anywhere else in any of the stories.  Toby was a dog Holmes and Watson borrowed in "The Sign of the Four," and there's the Hound of the Baskervilles -- but I don't see a whole lot of dogs in the stories, and I don't see Watson's bull pup anywhere else ever again.

[Carol the Dabbler]

As far as I'm aware, many people take that as a reference to (as you mention) Watson's handgun, while other's have fun thinking up reasons why the dog is never mentioned again.

You might be interested in an earlier thread on this subject.

 

[Brontodon]

17 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

You might be interested in an earlier thread on this subject.

Well, here I was thinking I had discovered some new, esoteric inconsistency in the Sherlock Holmes canon, and you've just shown me that it's been noticed and discussed on this very forum a dozen years ago!

Anyway, I fall on the side of a dog that is just never mentioned again.  "I keep a bull pup" would be a strange way of saying he owned a gun; owning a gun wouldn't be an impediment to being a good roommate (especially in Victorian London); and I don't even think that "bull pup" was a term for a specific firearm at the time -- such guns weren't developed until after 1900 and I don't think that terminology for them was used until much later.  (And now, it's one word: "bullpup".)

Watson also tells Holmes that one of his faults is that he is "extremely lazy," although that doesn't seem to be the Watson we know through all the stories.

[Carol the Dabbler]

51 minutes ago, Brontodon said:

owning a gun wouldn't be an impediment to being a good roommate

... unless he was inclined to shoot holes in the wall.  (But that was Holmes, not Watson.)

There may an extremely simple (real-world) explanation for the "bull pup" (whether canine or firearm) never being mentioned again -- same reason that John H. Watson's wife called him "James" in "Man with the Twisted Lip."  Some fans claim that Doyle's continuity didn't go bad till after Holmes came back from "the dead," but "Twisted Lip" came well before that -- as did Study in Scarlet, of course.