Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1895 — A Dog’s Passion For Dolls. [ARTICLE]

A Dog’s Passion For Dolls.

The latest sensation in Birmingham is the doll-snatching dog. The animal is the property of a lady who resides at Small Heath, and some time ago one of her little girls was very fond of inducing the dog to carry her doll, and the animal acquired quite a passion for relieving the child of her precious charge. The dog would carry it about for hours, and oftentimes take it to his kennel and lie down beside it for the greater part of the day. He never harmed the doll, always gripping its clothes, and not defacing it in the slightest. Up to a certain point its tendencies were productive of unadulterated fun, and so popular did the dog become that the children of the neighborhood frequently came to its owner’s house with the query, “Please, Mrs. doll a walk?” But by degrees the animal’s healthy affection for dolls developed into an absolute passion, and now a more unpopular quadruped does not exist in the whole suburb. Not content with carrying a doll when requested to do so, the animal commenced to prowl about the neighborhood and forcibly deprive stray children of their treasured pets. Whenever and wherever he saw a doll in a child’s arms he would stealthily walk up to her, seize the prize and run off with it to his kennel. In a single day he has been known to bring four captives home, and the macernal indignation of the neighborhood is something terrible to contemplate. If that dog does not mend his ways shortly, his career will be prematurely closed. The animal should be engaged at Christmas time in the interest of the Children’s Hospital; he would soon provide dolls for all the inmates.