WONDERFUL DOG STORY

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 October 1929, Page 3

WONDERFUL DOG STORY

HOW BOBBIE WENT HOME.

Among the good stories Captain Trapman gives in h'is recently published book, “The Dog,” one of the most remarkable is that of Bobbie, a collie, which was' taken from his home on the Pacific Coast, in Oregon, to Wolcott, in the east, a distance of 3000 miles as the crow flies. How Bobbie was attacked and hunted out of Wolcott by a herd of dogs, which pursued him for days until he gradually blew them all, is an epic of battle with which the present story is not particularly concerned, but the result was effectually to drive Bobbie away from his master’s ken and thoroughly to disorient him Six months later Bobbie reached home after incredible efforts against man atid nature. During his six months’ pilgrimage he not only crossed the Rockies in midwinter and swam innumerable wide, ice-laden rivers, but on one occasion, to avoid capture, he leaped from a bridge into the mighty flood of the Missouri River at night. Time and time again the kindly folks whom Bobbie selected as his hosts when forced by physical weakness to seek shelter urged him to stay and be welcome to a neWhome, but the faithful animal was obsessed by one idea—to find his master.’ On these occasions, as soon as his poor lacerated feet would permit, he .would set his nose to the westward, and continue his seemingly hopeless, lonely quest. There are but few epics of human-fortitude known to compare with the epic of Bobbie’s self-imposed pilgrimage. Lack of authentication is the commonest weakness of the “tall” dog story, but every step of this wonderful pilgrimage seems to have been carefully traced, remarks a reviewer of the book in the London Sunday Times,