Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 214, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1912 — OLD FIRE DOG IS PENSIONED [ARTICLE]

OLD FIRE DOG IS PENSIONED

Pet That Followed Engines on Every Call Is Spending His Declining Years at Summer Resort. Brooklyn, N. \ .—Bearing the marks of many wounds received in honorable service, and having passed the age limit at which retirement is compulsory, Mack, the erstwhile mascot at Brooklyn fire headquarters, has been retired on a pension and is passing his declining years at a hotel on Shelter Island, L. 1., where he is disproving the. adage that an old dog cannot be taught new tricks. Mack has become a “buff” of the Shelter Island Fire department, but cannot find enough exercise in the task to keep in physical condition. Instead of running to a fire a dosen times a day, as be did when at the Brooklyn fire headquarters. Mack now is iucky if he has a call to a fire once *a month. When the time hangs heavily be amuses visitors at the hotel by running up a ladder with the agility of a fireman. When Warren Schneider, the Brooklyn fireman who was counted as Mack’s best friend, sent him to the hotel, Schneider said be did not believe Mack would live a month so far away from fire headquarters, but Michael Stacano made a bet with Schheider that not only the mascot would live but that be was sot too eld to learn a new trick. Mack has fulfilled the prediction. Henry Walther, proprietor of the hotel. writes to Schneider that' Mack la a big favorite with the visitors. He has taught the fire dog to extinguish lighted -cigars and cigarettes tfarowb

on tbe hotel veranda and to "play dead” and chase a ball with the children. Mack had many escapes from death when he was running with the Brooklyn firemen. Once he was run over by the chiefs wagon and a policeman was about to end his agony when firemen interfered and saved his life. Many times he has been kicked by tbe horses, but always recovered jmder prompt surgical treatment