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Loyal Sheep Dog

December 12th, 1953, Tip and her master, Joseph Tagg, an eighty-one year-old retired gamekeeper from Bamford, England, had been out on one of their long walks on the Howden (high Derbyshire) moors when the old man passed away.

For fifteen weeks search parties failed, and were set back due to severe frost and snow storms. The man and dog were presumed dead, when, a couple of men rounding up stray sheep in early spring came across the body of Tip’s master, with a starving and sickly Tip on guard beside it. She had waited for over three months, through the worst of winter, for help to come for the one she loved.

Tip spent her last year with a niece of Joseph Tagg, were she was awarded the highest order of canine chivalry. A year after her death, a memorial shrine was unveiled along the banks of Derwent Dam, in Derbyshire.

Bobby the Loyal Terrier - From Fred Smith

Bobby a terrier-mix was the best friend of Mr. John Gray, or “Auld Jock” as he was locally known. Auld Jock was a Shepherd who died in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1958. At Edinburgh’s Greyfriar’s Churchyard Cemetery, only the man who found him and the gravedigger were there at the funeral, along with Bobby. Despite the “No Dogs” sign at the graveyard entrance, Bobby kept a fourteen-year vigil over his master’s grave.

Bobby was soon a common sight around the neighborhood, he was fed everyday at 1:00pm by John Traill’s family at the Greyfriars Dining Room. In 1967, after being picked up as a stray, Bobby was rescued by Sir William Chambers, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, who paid for Bobby’s Dog License and collar.

When Bobby died, the Scotsman paper printed an obituary, January 17th, 1872, for the only canine Freeman of the City. Bobby was buried next to his master at Greyfriars. A red granite water fountain, with a statue of Bobby in bronze resting on top, in memorial of a loyal friendship by Baroness Burdett Coutts is placed in Candlemakers; Row, near his graveyard. In the seventies, Walt Disney dedicated one of their weekly hour shows to this wonderful little dog, entitled “Greyfriars’ Bobby.”