I came near meeting a heavy loss two days before leaving the city. Somehow I got sandwiched in on the East Side above the Brooklyn bridge in the congested district of the foreign quarters and finally at nightfall drove into a stable, put the oxen in the stalls and, as usual, the dog Jim in the wagon. The next morning Jim was gone. The stablemen said he had left the wagon a few moments after I had and had been stolen. The police accused the stablemen of being a party to the theft, in which I think they were right. Anyway, the day wore off and no tidings. Money could not buy that dog. He was an integral part of the expedition; always on the alert; always watchful of the wagon during my absence and always willing to mind what I bid him to do. He had had more adventures than any other member of the work; first he had been tossed over a high brush by the ox Dave; then shortly after pitched headlong over a barbed wire fence by an irate cow; then came the fight with a wolf; following this came a narrow escape from the rattlesnake in the road; after this a trolley car run over him. rolling him over and over again until he came out as dizzy as a drunken man—I thought he was a “goner” that time sure, but he soon straightened up, and finally in the streets of Kansas City was run over by a heavy truck while fighting another dog. The other dog was killed outright, while Jim came near having his neck broken, lost one of his best fighting teeth and had several others broken. I sent him to a veterinary surgeon and curiously enough he made no protest while having the broken teeth repaired and extracted. He could eat nothing but soup and milk for several days, and that poured down him, as he could neither lap nor swallow liquids. It came very near being “all day” with Jim, but he is here with me all right and seemingly good for a new adventure.
No other method could disclose where to find him than to offer a reward, which I did, and feel sure I paid the twenty dollars to one of the fellow-parties to the theft who was brazen faced enough to demand pay for keeping him. Then was when I got up and talked pointedly, and was glad enough to get out of that part of the city.
From The busy life of eighty-five years of Ezra Meeker By Ezra Meeker
1916
The dog Jim shown here with the team on the bridge, has come all the way across the continent; his habit of trotting on the way ahead and then returning to meet the team, and next to run out on first one side the road and then the other, has caused him to travel more than three times as far as the oxen; estimate has travelled 10,000 miles; he always disliked to ride in the wagon; Scotch Collie, 3 years old (July, 1907).
From old post card
