100 Dogs Who Changed Civilization (14 page)

His first movie, 1921's
The Silent Call
, instantly
turned the German shepherd into a four-legged action hero. Just like a human star, he made personal appearances all over the country, where his fans lined up for a chance to have a look and, perhaps, to pat his enormous head.

During the 1920s Strongheart made film after film, with titles such as
Brawn of the North
and
The Return of Boston Blackie
. He even developed a romantic interest with a female German shepherd named Lady Jule. The two appeared together onscreen, and offscreen they produced several litters of puppies.

Strongheart's movie career came to a tragic end in the summer of 1929. While doing a stunt for his next project, the normally sure-footed dog slipped and fell into a hot studio light. The resulting burn refused to heal, and it claimed his life a few weeks later. But his legacy lived on in surprising ways: His numerous offspring starred in several films, the Strongheart dog food brand is named after him, and perhaps most importantly, he's one of only three canines (along with Rin Tin Tin and Lassie) to earn a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Everybody knows Lassie, but far fewer know the dog who first played her on screen. And yet Pal, who portrayed the world's smartest collie in the seminal 1943 film
Lassie Come Home
, has an interesting story to share. Despite his early days as an incorrigible obedience school dropout, this undeniably male dog became an international sensation by portraying a female canine.

Lassie was “born” in 1938, when author Eric Knight penned a short story for the
Saturday Evening Post
called
Lassie Come-Home
, about a collie who travels the length of Scotland to reunite with the boy she loves. The popular tale became an even more popular novel, and in 1943 MGM signed it up as a movie. An elite show collie was engaged to play the title role, but fate intervened when northern California's Sacramento River flooded, providing a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get some spectacular footage of “Lassie” fording the water. However, the canine thespian the studio cast was still in training and wasn't ready to begin filming. MGM turned to a company called Weatherwax Trained Dogs, run by brothers Rudd and Frank Weatherwax, for a stand-in.

To say that the brothers were a little low on collies at the time would be an understatement. The dog the brothers offered the studio was a male named Pal. His original owner couldn't train him properly and had turned to the Weatherwaxes for help; when the man found he couldn't pay the ten dollars he owed the brothers for their work, he surrendered the dog as payment instead. Pal was no one's idea of a show dog. He lacked the “classic” collie look and had a penchant for chasing cars, but he did have one key advantage—he could act.

The Weatherwax brothers and the film crew discovered just how good he was at the bank of the Sacramento River. Pal didn't just ford the river on cue. When he emerged onto the bank, he appeared exhausted, as if barely able to drag himself onto dry land. In acting parlance, he nailed it. From that moment on, Pal was a star. As MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer reportedly said when he saw the footage, “Pal had entered the water, but Lassie had come out.”

In the digital age, worldwide fame comes quickly and easily. Even dogs can do it.

One such canine Internet sensation was manufactured in 2006. The dog in question owed its celebrity to a bizarre class assignment at Adcenter, the graduate advertising program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Mike Lear, one of the program's adjunct professors, asked his class to help make his pug, Oscar, famous.

The idea was to use viral marketing to turn the diminutive dog into a big deal. Some students put up flyers, while others created pug-intensive rap songs. But someone else (no one's ever figured out who) took it to the next level. He or she posted an anonymous announcement on the social networking site
Myspace.com
stating that Oscar would be killed online.

That did the trick. The story spread worldwide. Animal lovers bombarded the university with irate messages, and eventually the police looked into the matter. Oscar, just as the assignment outlined, was a star. However, the project's original instructions stated that no threats of harm could be made against the pug. “Whoever did it got an F,” Adcenter managing director Rick Boyko told the
Richmond Times-Dispatch
.

Tales of Catholic saints regularly include stories of divine intervention, but Saint Giovanni Melchior Bosco (better known as Don Bosco) enjoyed protection that was a little more down-to-earth: a gigantic dog-turned-bodyguard named Grigio.

Bosco, who lived from 1815 to 1888, spent his life helping underprivileged boys in and around the industrial town of Turin, Italy. During the early days of his ministry he was in danger both from criminals, who thought he had money to steal, and businessmen and city officials, who resented his attempts to organize and educate their low-cost labor pool. Over the years, Don Bosco survived several determined attempts on his life. And they might have succeeded, were it not for the repeated—and nearly inexplicable—interventions of the enormous Grigio. When Bosco was in danger, the huge dog would appear out of nowhere to rout his attackers. Once order was restored, he'd simply turn and walk away.

As the years passed and Bosco's reputation grew, neither thieves nor local officials dared to touch him. And the mighty Grigio, who was always drawn by trouble, simply faded away, never to be seen again.

The famous movie
Lassie Come Home
tells the story of an intrepid collie who walks the length of Scotland to find the boy she loves. But even that legendary journey sounds like a mere walk around the block when compared to the real-life accomplishments of an American collie named Bobbie. To reunite with his family, Bobbie undertook a half-year, 2,500-mile (4,000 km) journey across the breadth of the continental United States.

Bobbie began his life as the companion of G. F. Brazier, a restaurant owner in Silverton, Oregon. During the summer of 1923, Brazier, his wife, and Bobbie traveled to Indiana by car. There, during a stopover in the tiny town of Wolcott, the couple lost track of their dog. Figuring he was gone forever, they resumed their journey.

As the weeks passed, the memories of Bobbie faded. But six months later, on February 15, 1924, something truly miraculous happened. Brazier's stepdaughter, Nova, was walking down a Silverton street when she spotted a skinny, shaggy collie who nevertheless looked a lot like the long-lost Bobbie. She commented on the resemblance to a companion, and the dog, hearing the word
“Bobbie,” rushed to the delighted girl, danced around her, and smothered her with kisses. Bobbie soon was reunited with his entire family, which identified him beyond all doubt by several old scars and other marks the dog had acquired while living with them.

No one could imagine how the dog managed to travel so far—or how he'd even known where to go. But as the story of Bobbie the Wonder Dog (as he came to be known) spread around the nation, people who had helped him along the way wrote the Braziers to tell what happened. Apparently the dog had retraced, almost exactly, the route the family took to Indiana. “He would turn up at some house where we had stopped or some town we had passed through, his eyes half closed and red with strain, his feet bleeding, ravenously hungry, so tired he was ready to drop,” Brazier wrote in a contemporary account. “Some friend of dogs would feed and doctor him and he would rest for a while, but as soon as he could, he would be up and away again.”

When he arrived at a spot he recognized from his car trip, Bobbie's first order of business was to frantically run from room to room, looking for his lost family. He would take no notice of the people who actually lived or worked in the place until after he'd satisfied himself that his human companions were nowhere present. His diligence, not to mention his phenomenal navigational skills,
turned him into a media darling. Books were written about him, he made numerous personal appearances, and his exploits were recounted in a movie. An Oregon contractor built Bobbie his own “dream” doghouse—a miniature bungalow equipped with eight curtained windows. He was also the guest of honor at a Portland exposition, where he was petted by more than 100,000 fans.

Today the fame of Bobbie the Wonder Dog lives on in his hometown of Silverton, where his February 15 return date is commemorated as Bobbie Day. There's a statue of the famous canine, a mural recounting his exploits, and even a replica of the deluxe doghouse he got for finding his way home.