Free 100 Dogs Who Changed Civilization by Sam Stall Page B

promising that he could do whatever was asked of him in one take. After much jawboning, the crew decided to give the newcomer a shot. Rinny, as promised, delivered a perfect performance on the first try. A star was born.
    Rin Tin Tin became the canine lead of the film, called
Man from Hell’s River
. It was a huge hit for its studio, Warner Bros.—though “studio” was perhaps too grandiose a name for a shoestring operation consisting of a handful of employees, a few cameras, and four immigrant brothers from Poland named Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner. Rin Tin Tin would make twenty-six pictures for the company over the next decade, becoming both a wonder dog and a cash cow. At studio headquarters, no one doubted that the only thing keeping the wolf from the door was the work of a single, very talented German shepherd—a German shepherd who was fondly referred to around the water cooler as “the mortgage lifter.”
    At one time Rinny was as big a name as any to be found today on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame—the dog received some ten thousand pieces of fan mail during his heyday. He kept workinguntil he died unexpectedly on Friday, August 10, 1932. The following Monday he’d been scheduled to start shooting his next film.
    Rin Tin Tin’s progeny attempted to continue his legacy. A son, dubbed Rin Tin Tin II, briefly carried on in films. During World War II another son, Rin Tin Tin III, joined Duncan in training some five thousand canines and their human handlers as war dogs. But Rin Tin Tin’s true legacy resides on the silver screen. Without him, Warner Bros. would have gone under—and such Warner Bros. classics as
Casablanca
and
Rebel Without a Cause
might never have been made.

GREYFRIARS
BOBBY
THE TINY DOG WHO BECAME A
TOWERING MONUMENT TO LOYALTY

    The ancient Scottish cemetery known as Greyfriars Kirkyard (churchyard) has accepted tenants for hundreds of years. Today the Edinburgh landmark serves as the final resting place for many great names, but none can match the fame of a humble dog known as Bobby, whose devotion to his deceased master made him an undying symbol of fidelity.
    The saga of Greyfriars Bobby began around 1856, when a gardener named John Gray moved to Edinburgh with his family and took a job as a night watchman. To keep him company on patrols, he took along his tiny, furry Skye terrier, Bobby. The two were inseparable and became a fixture on the city’s streets. But years of walking his beat in all kinds of weather took their toll on Gray, who contracted tuberculosis and died in 1858. He was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard.
    Bobby refused to accept his companion’s passing. He began to frequent the cemetery, never straying far from Gray’s grave, in spite of the cemetery’s staff energetic efforts to evict him. Finally, his devotion won the hearts of the local citizenry. A shelter was erected for Bobby close tohis master’s final resting place, and the terrier was given regular meals at a nearby coffeehouse where he and his master had once dined together. As his fame grew, tourists would gather at the entrance of the churchyard around 1 P.M. , waiting for Bobby to march, like clockwork, from the cemetery to the restaurant.
    The faithful dog kept his vigil until his own death on January 14, 1872, at the age of sixteen. Because canines were forbidden burial on consecrated ground, he was given a grave near the churchyard’s entrance. His headstone reads: “Greyfriars Bobby, died 14th January 1872, aged 16 years. Let his loyalty and devotion be a lessonto us all.”
    The headstone’s inscription seems to ring true. Almost a century and a half have passed since Bobby’s departure, but his deeds live on. In 1873 a bronze sculpture of the loyal canine—modeled from the original, still-living Bobby—was raised just outside the entrance to Greyfriars Kirkyard. The coffee shop where the little dog and his