Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1894 — A Dog’s Career. [ARTICLE]

A Dog’s Career.

Recently there died in Boston, and was “buried at sea” with something like funeral honors, a dog who had lived a useful life, as well as an extremely long one for his kind. His name—a very inappropriate one, for he seems to have been a dog of staid habits and serious life was Sport; and he was believed to be twenty-five yea: s old when he died. He was known to be more than twenty, for it was twenty years ago when he a large bull-terrier, who looked then as if he might be an old dog was found wandering about T Wharf in Boston. He seemed to be a friendly fellow, and his appearance must have been favorable, for several men who belonged to a sailing craft tried to coax him aboard their vessels, and several storekeepers also offered to adopt him. He declined the advances of all save the men who were in the employ of the Sprague Towboat Company, which had an office on the wharf. To the concern he steadfastly attached himself, and was adopted by the crew of the tugboat Chatterton. About half his time he spent on board this tug, and the rest of it about the company’s office. It was here that he developed his most useful trait. About the company's premises many cans of oil were kept, and for this, as well as for other reasons, smoking was forbidden. Nevertheless, not infrequently employes of the tugs and others came smoking about the premises. Sport early learned what the rule was, and made it his business to see that it was not transgressed. Whenever a man entered the office with a pipe or a cigar, Sport went at once to him, followed him about watchfully, and if he approached the oiltanks, he would seize him by the trousers’ leg, growling at the same time. This always had the effect to stop the smoking. Sport was a large terrier, weighing fifty-six pounds, and as the boatmen said, “had a head like an anvil.” He never hurt any one, but had been known to give a smoker a slight pinch in the leg if he did not desist from his smoking. The men placed his body in a stout box, weighted with grate bars. A small flag was tacked to the box. Then the tug steamed with the box a distance of ten miles outside the harbor, and there the coffin was slid off the gangplank into the depths of the ocean.