Dogs Who Changed History

One hundred and one real dogs. One hundred and one true stories.

A stray who wandered onto a Connecticut football field in 1917 and ended up in the Smithsonian. A Labrador asleep under a desk on the 78th floor on the morning of September 11. A farm collie in Northumberland whose quiet way of working changed how sheep are moved on every continent. A terrier in Bristol who tilted his head at a phonograph and was printed on a hundred million records.

They fought in wars and went into orbit. They walked to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark, sat in on Sigmund Freud's sessions, found survivors in the rubble of the World Trade Center, and waited at station exits for men who were never coming back.

What makes this book different: it tells you what is actually true.

Barry the St Bernard never wore a brandy barrel, and the man who invented it was a teenage painter. Gelert's famous grave in Wales was set up by an innkeeper to fill rooms. The most celebrated grave-guarding dog in the world does not survive close examination. Where a beloved story falls apart under evidence, this book says so, and the true version is almost always stranger than the legend.

Each chapter is three or four minutes of reading. Start anywhere. Read one a night for three months or thirty in an afternoon.

Inside:

• Dogs of war, from a bull terrier at Gettysburg to a Malinois in a tunnel in Syria
• Dogs who saved lives, from an Alpine pass in 1800 to the Mexico City earthquake
• Dogs of science and medicine, including the one who proved insulin worked
• Dogs of exploration, from Lewis and Clark to the only dog to stand at both poles
• Dogs who lived close to power, from Alexander the Great to the White House
• Dogs of the screen, from the first film with a plot to the Academy Awards
• Dogs of loyalty and legend, and which of those legends hold up
• Dogs who changed how we live, from the first guide dog in America to the collie every border collie on earth descends from

With a full index of all 101 dogs and a note on sources.

A note on what this is. It is a text-only collection, with no photographs or illustrations. It is also not a sentimental book. Some of these dogs were used badly by people who should have known better, and those chapters are here too, because leaving them out would make it a nicer book and a less honest one.