Whether they’re pounding the streets as police pooches, offering comfort as furry therapists or even serving as right hand pooch to the President, Man’s Best Friend can be relied upon to save the day time and again.
Here are just a few of our favourite doggy tales…
He sniffs – he scores!
The police had no leads when, in March 1966, the World Cup trophy was stolen from a display case in central London. Step forward eagle-eyed and nifty-nosed Pickles, a collie from south London who, a week after the theft, spotted something wrapped in newspaper under a neighbour’s car – the 18-carat gold trophy. Pickles, and his owner David Corbett, became national heroes, and they joined England’s celebration banquet after the team beat West Germany in the World Cup final four months later. His collar is displayed for pawsterity at the National Football Museum in Manchester.
Luftwoofer versus the Luftwaffe
Bing the german shepherd was one of an elite squad of dogs trained as paratroopers in the Second World War. Bing got tangled in a tree during his first landing in Occupied France in June 1944 but he proved his worth to the 13th Parachute Battalion on reconnaissance, spotting enemy snipers from afar, sniffing out mines and guarding his troop while they slept. Bing was awarded the PDSA’s Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, on his return to Britain and enjoyed a long and happy retirement with the appropriately named Fetch family in Loughborough.
Get ON the couch!
Therapy dogs are now a familiar sight in hospitals and care homes, but arguably the first of their kind was a chow-chow called Jofi, companion to the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud in the 1930s. Jofi would lie on the floor next to Freud’s famous couch (obviously better trained than most dogs who would jump up onto it) and, as Freud soon realised, patients would talk more openly than usual as they petted her. Nonetheless, Jofi’s main priority was her elderly master. When patients reached their allotted hour with Freud, she would yawn and stretch elaborately, signalling that it was time for them to leave. Now that’s what we call a reliable personal assistant.
I’ll never desert you
When a little stray dog started running beside him on a gruelling 155-mile race through the Gobi Desert in March 2016, ultra-marathoner Dion Leonard told her to go away. “She was getting between my feet and I was trying to win!” Dion remembers. Reliable to the end, the dog kept pace for 25 miles and come nightfall the runner shared his food and tent with her. For four days and 77 miles the chihuahua-shih tzu cross matched Dion step for step – crossing the finish line in second place, he held her aloft. “We developed an unbreakable bond,” Dion says and the dog, christened Gobi, moved to Edinburgh to join his family.
The President and the pooch
Charlie the welsh terrier was such a favourite of JFK’s that, when he bit White House gardeners on the bum, they shrugged, knowing complaints would fall on deaf Presidential ears. But for all his mischief, Charlie may well have brought the world back from the brink of war. At the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, with fraught aides spinning around him, President Kennedy took a few minutes of quiet reflection with Charlie on his lap. Then he leaned forward on his desk and said: “I suppose it’s time to make some decisions.” He chose diplomacy.
Wagney and Lacey
Molly the cocker spaniel has an unusual talent for a dog – as sidekick to pet detective Colin Butcher, her mission, if she chooses to accept it, is to find lost cats. Trained in feline fragrance, Molly the dogtective’s success rate is over 75 per cent – she lies down and locks eyes on Colin when she’s sniffed out a missing moggy. One of her discoveries was Tom, a ginger cat from Worthing – he was trapped in a garage, on his ninth life and close to death with internal bleeding and a broken leg. Do the cats thank Molly for rescuing them? No, but Colin’s proud. “She’s a clever girl.”