Bruce

A slim book with stories about a collie dog. Unlike most of the collies at Sunnybank (or “The Place” in this narrative), Bruce starts out without much promise. He’s an unattractive puppy with some physical faults. He’s scorned at dog shows (in the puppy class) and the Master doesn’t want to keep him. But by odd circumstances he ends up staying at The Place. The first chapter isn’t about Bruce at all, but about his mother- a young collie sold for next to nothing from a breeder’s kennels, because for some reason nobody wants to own a female dog as a pet. There was some very strong prejudice against them for some reason, which I found kind of baffling. A boy from a poor family desires to use his birthday money to get a pet dog, and is upset when his mother protests and wants the dog sent back or destroyed, just because she found out it was a female. The father refuses in front of the kid, but then sneaks the dog out and tells the boy it ran away. What he did was take it to the railway tracks and shove it into an empty boxcar. Apparently people used to get rid of unwanted animals (and even babies!) this way in the past, hoping the animal would not be found until it was very away. Someone else’s problem now.

Well, Lass (the dog’s name) gets out of the rail car, and gets accidentally swapped with another collie dog in the railway yard. She ends up shipped to Sunnybank, where the people immediately know they got the wrong dog, but the Mistress is taken with her sweet temperament, and wants to keep her. She has her first litter- just one puppy, Bruce- who grows up at The Place, from an awkward, poorly-conformed pup into a magnificent large dark collie. He becomes a cherished part of the household. But then is offered up in service to his country, sent away to war. He is trained as a courier dog, to take messages when ordinary communication lines are down. He learns the names of people and places he would go between. The rest of the book is stories about his exploits in war. Missing getting shot miraculously, and saving his regiment. Leading men in the dark fog through dangerous areas back to their home base. Sniffing out a spy in a village where they are encamped, when everyone else was fooled by the man’s disguise. And in the end, being so injured they were holding a burial for him, when he revived on the spot, having been just stunned unconscious by the bullet that grazed his skull. He was brave, took his duties and training seriously, and was loved and admired by all the men, who saved little tidbits for him, and took comfort in petting him. (Except one time when everyone was so stressed they ignored him, so then he wandered out and sat with a man on sentry duty, and ended up saving the day because he was there to give warning, as well).

At the very end he returns home proclaimed a hero dog, a bit stiff from some healed injuries, but welcomed back with open arms and taking his place at Sunnybank again. I really didn’t expect this book to be mostly war stories, and I was a bit lost sometimes at the dialect of the servicemen, the terms and slang they used, and descriptions of what happened. But was able to follow it well enough to appreciate the role the dog played. Not my favorite Terhune so far, but interesting enough and a good read.