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A
TRIBUTE TO THE DOG
Gentlemen
of the Jury: The best friend a man has in this world may turn
against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he
has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are
nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness
and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money
that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when
he needs it the most. A man's reputation may be sacrificed in
a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to
fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may
be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles
its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend
that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never
deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous
is his dog.
Gentlemen of the Jury, a man's dog stands by him in prosperity
and poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold
ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely,
if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand
that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that
come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards
the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all
other friends desert he remains. When riches take wings and reputation
falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its
journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth
an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful
dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to
guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the
last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace
and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all
other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the
noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but
open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.
——George
Graham Vest (later US Senator), Burden vs. Hornsby, Warrensburg,
Missouri, 1870
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The fame of this outstanding speech—considered the source of
the saying that a dog is man's best friend—has far eclipsed
that of the original case and its participants. In brief, when Leonidas
Hornsby shot and killed the dog of his brother-in-law, Charles Burden,
(wrongly) accusing it of sheep-killing, the latter went to court.
Vest made his now-famous speech on behalf of Burden and the dog
at the last of several jury trials. The state Supreme Court later
upheld the payment of damages to Burden.
The
recent film, "The
Trial of Old Drum" (shown on the Animal Planet Channel
in 2001), movingly presents the plight of the dog and his family
but in the process unnecessarily distorts the basic history. Indeed,
it manages both to sentimentalize an already sentimental story and
to pull its punches. For one thing, the film, for no readily apparent
reason, transposes the setting from the 1870s to the 1950s. One
can only assume that the producers did not credit the mass audience
with the ability to identify with figures from the "distant"
past. The film can therefore also conveniently avoid the fact that
Vest, who spoke so eloquently of the rights of dogs, honed his rhetorical
skills as an ardent Secessionist and then as a Senator of the Confederacy,
which was not notably devoted to the cause of human rights. Among
other things, it is therefore ironic that Animal Planet described
the film as a "true story" and "E! online" presented
its synopsis of the film under the rubric, "the
facts." (Admittedly, Vest was evidently a complex character.
Although he was the author of the Missouri Act of Secession and
a strong defender of the rebel cause, he also later spoke up for
Native American rights and worked for the preservation of Yellowstone
National Park.) Finally, the film portrays Old Drum as having survived
when it was in fact his tragic death that occasioned the legal battles
in the first place.
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regional dog news
Yankee
Dog(quarterly; serving the Southern Green
Mountains, South-western New Hampshire, and the Pioneer
Valley)
Bowser Publications
P.O. Box 144
Jacksonville, VT 05342
802.368.7660
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training
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A
dog well taught
E'en by the wisest of us may be sought.
Ay, to your favour he's entitled too.
Goethe, Faust, Part I
(
more)
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Sirius
Center: Obedience Training and Behavior Modification
for Show and Home
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(the eyes tell the story)
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