1. Not so famous as the common farmyard “curs,” the mixed-breed feist were smaller versions that also played an important role the early settlement of the United States. Feists still hunt squirrels, raccoons, and opossums, but if necessary they’ll take on bigger foes.

In 1832 a broadsheet from upper New York state tells of a young farm woman irritated by her feist while gathering beans in front of her new log cabin. The little dog wouldn’t stop barking. When she turned to scold the feist, she saw it was facing down a cougar crouched on a stump — just twenty feet from her baby.

She quickly grabbed her child and ran into the house. When her husband and their big dog later hunted down and killed the cougar, he found the remains of the brave little dog in the big cat’s stomach.

2. George Washington had a high regard for dogs, and ordered his revolutionary soldiers to treat all animals well, including those captured from the British. Following the defeat of the Continental forces at Germantown in 1777, General Washington returned a small dog to the British leader General Howe. Washington could see from the inscription on the dog’s collar that it belonged to the enemy commander who had just bested him in battle.

3. One of the famous dogs of U.S. history is Seaman, the Newfoundland who accompanied Meriwether Lewis on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Seaman’s hunting skills proved invaluable for providing food for the entire expedition. While they were camped below the Great Falls, Seaman patrolled the camp at night to keep out bears.

Once a beaver bit Seaman severely in the leg, but Lewis managed to staunch the bleeding and the dog’s wound healed. Another time, a small band of Indians stole Seaman, but released him when chased down.

4. The famous naturalist and extraordinary painter of birds, John James Audubon, travelled with a Newfoundland named Plato. Plato retrieved the birds shot by Audubon so he could examine and paint them.

5. An unlikely pair of vagrant dogs named Bummer and Lazarus became well-known for killing rats in the saloon district of Gold Rush-era San Francisco. No less a reporter than Mark Twain wrote up Bummer’s 1865 death: “He died full of years, and honor, and disease, and fleas.”

6. The great naturalist and explorer John Muir took a small black dog named Stickeen with him when he hiked across the glacier that now bears his name, near Taylor Bay Alaska. On their way back to camp, they came to a 50-foot wide, 1000-foot deep crevasse. The only way across it was a narrow bridge of ice about 10 feet below the glacier’s surface.

They couldn’t turn back. Nightfall was nearing, and a storm was upon them. Despite the wind, dropping temperatures and swirling snow making it difficult to see more than a few feet in front of him, Muir carved steps into the ice to get down to the ice bridge. He then crossed the ice bridge by straddling it, then carved steps to get back to the glacier’s surface on the other side.

Stickeen howled and whined in protest, but finally forced himself to follow the path of the man who would later found The Sierra Club. After sharing this experience, Stickeen would not leave Muir’s side.

7. During World War I, a French dog named Satan played a critical role during the Battle of Verdun. Wearing a gas mask and carrying a pair of trained pigeons, Satan raced two miles through German lines to deliver a message to soldiers in a village trapped by enemy fire.

A sniper’s bullet caught Satan as he approached the near-surrender garrison, but his trainer in the embattled unit, a man named Duval, recognized the dog and stood up and called out to encourage him. Duval was killed by enemy bullets, but Satan made it through with his message begging the garrison to hold out until sunrise.

The soldiers wrote the coordinates of the German artillery battery on the message slips carried by the pigeons and released them. The Germans shot down one of the pigeons, but the other made it back to Allied lines. French gunners then took out the German artillery, enabling the garrison to survive until relief forces arrived at sunrise.

8. In 1918 a signal corps private named James Donovan literally stumbled over a clump of rags on the pavement of Montmartre that turned out to be a mixed breed pup he named Rags. Before long, Rags was helping Donovan keep open lines of communication between the infantry and artillery during the second battle of the Marne. When the field telephone lines went down, Donovan sent Rags off as a courier.

Rags became a local hero for bringing artillery reinforcements to an isolated infantry unit. With his canine hearing, Rags could hear incoming enemy artillery rounds before the human soldiers. They quickly learned to follow his lead when he took cover.

In the Argonne Forest in September, Rags brought help for Donovan’s unit despite being wounded and blinded in one eye by an artillery shell. The wounded Donovan and Rags were sent together back to an American hospital.

9. The most celebrated dog of World War I was Stubby, a Boston bull terrier belonging to J. Robert Conroy. Conroy managed to smuggle Stubby to the Western Front, where Stubby caught a German spy by biting him in the ass. Conroy and his fellow soldiers learned to trust when Stubby’s superior ears and nose alerted him to incoming artillery rounds and mustard gas.

Stubby made it through 17 battles, was made an honorary sergeant, was awarded a large number of medals, and eventually met both Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

10. The most famous dog hero of World War II was Chips. Born of a husky and German shepherd-collie mix, Chips and his handler joined the 1943 invasion of Sicily. Once on the beach, he broke free of his leash and took out an Italian machine gun bunker. He went through other battle campaigns, and was the cause of some controversy after being awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart.

Chips later served as a guard dog at a POW camp, where he once bit his commander-in-chief, General Dwight Eisenhower.

11. In the war on the Pacific, the Canine Corps proved invaluable while accompanying combat patrols of Marines. The scouting Dobermans and German Shepherds regularly foiled Japanese ambushes. They were also adept at identifying the hiding places of Japanese soldiers in huts and caves. Also, they served as messengers through thick jungles and tall grass. Marine patrols using the dogs suffered far fewer casualties than those without them.

12. Dogs also served the American military during Vietnam War. The American War Dogs Association has estimated that dogs saved 10,000 lives, mostly by helping the soldiers avoid Viet Cong ambushes.

One marine sentry dog, Bruiser, alerted his handler John Flanely of an ambush. Flanely opened fire on the Viet Cong, who returned fire, wounding Flanely. Flanely ordered Bruiser back, but the dog disobeyed and, despite his own wounds, dragged Flanely to safety.

13. In his book IF DOGS COULD TALK, Vilmos Csanyi tells the story of Balthasar, a dog included in some experiments at the Department of Ethology at the God Research Center in Budapest, Hungary. At the end of the experiments, the scientists placed all the dogs in homes, as pets. Balthasar, however, ran away from his new homes three times to return to the Research Center. So they allowed him to remain, making him the watch dog.

Years later, Balthasar formed an attachment to an elderly man hired as the night janitor. In the mornings he started going home with the night janitor, returning only at night to the Center to do his job. After a few months, the night janitor became sick and died.

Balthasar returned to the Research Center on a full-time basis — except on many mornings he left to spend hours sitting in the night janitor’s yard.

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