Gurdjieff’s Tiflis Dog Catcher
In The Tales, in respect of dog-catching, we read:
“The duty of this barber-surgeon friend of mine consisted in going at a certain time through the town accompanied by an assistant with a specially constructed carriage and seizing all the stray dogs whose collars were without the metal plates distributed by the local authorities on payment of the tax and taking these dogs to the municipal slaughterhouse where they were kept for two weeks at municipal expense,
In Tiflis, as elsewhere, the job of “dog-catcher” had a far lower status than the profession of “barber-surgeon”. It was a menial “police adjacent” job.
The stray dog problem
At the turn of the 20th century, Tiflis—then part of the Russian Empire—faced significant issues with stray dogs and the constant threat of rabies. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many cities in the Russian Empire, including Tiflis, implemented a municipal tax on dog ownership to control the stray population and fund sanitation efforts. The tax tried to ensure that only “responsible” citizens kept dogs, theoretically reducing the number of animals on the street.
When an owner paid the annual tax, they received a small metal tag (often called a “dog token” or zheton). This tag had to be attached to the dog’s collar and served as a dog “passport.” If a dog was found on the street without a visible tag, it was legally considered a stray.
Zhivodyory
Dog-catchers were often referred to as zhivodyory (which means “skinners”) because they skinned the stray dogs for their hides. The “skinners” were usually paid per head, and made extra money from selling the hides. Dog pelts were used to make cheap furs, linings for winter boots, and caps. The dog-catchers also sold fat from the dogs’ carcasses to soap-boilers.
Wealthy residents could easily afford the tax and their dogs often sported polished brass tags. For the poor, however, the tax was a burden. If a poor family’s dog was caught without a tag, they usually couldn’t afford the fine to “ransom” the dog back from the city pound, so the dog would inevitably be killed and processed by the skinners. The word zhivoder eventually became a general Russian insult for a cruel or bloodthirsty person, a meaning it still carries.
The Barber-surgeon
By the 1890s, the “barber-surgeon” as a singular hybrid profession was obsolete in Tiflis. The Russian Empire, which governed Georgia at the time, had a formalized medical system. Surgical tasks were performed by doctors or feldshers (trained medical assistants). Barbers were simply barbers.
So Gurdjieff’s barber-surgeon is metaphorical. He would not have been a dog-catcher or a surgeon. Gurdjieff uses this metaphor several times throughout The Tales possibly to indicate a part of the psyche concerned with psychological health.