The Pittsburgh Press (January 16, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SCOTIA, Cal. – Since I have become a dog man, I am easy prey to any and all dog stories. This one is about a dog named Blondie.
Blondie belongs to Stan Murphy, president of the Pacific Lumber Co., who has had the rare privilege of bedding and boarding me recently.
As I told you, Murphy is a hunting fiend. It was natural that sooner or later he should have an outstanding dog. Blondie was that dog. Blondie became famous.
He (yes, Blondie is a man-dog) has often been referred to by Tod Powell, who writes “The Woodsman” column in The San Francisco Chronicle, as the greatest hunting dog in California.
Blondie is a setter. Pure white, except for one black ring around his tail. He loved to “work,” as hunters say. He was the workingest setter ever known in this state. He never tired. He would go all day long, and never slacken.
He was the finest retriever any of Murphy’s hunting friends ever knew. He was as good in ice and water as on land. When other hunters’ dogs gave up on finding a downed quail, they would call for Blondie, and he would bring it in. He was always wild to go, and never ready to come home.
One day Stan Murphy and Blondie went for a little hunt by themselves, not far from Murphy’s mountain lodge here in the redwood-forested hills.
Murphy climbed a high hill and stopped to look around. Down below him Blondie was frozen in a set, if that’s the right hunter’s word. Murphy’s cue of course was to go back down and beat out the bird, to repay Blondie for his diligence.
Blondie finds a porcupine
“But I was just too damned lazy to lose the altitude I had gained,” Murphy says. So he gave the order for Blondie to go in after the bird himself. Murphy figured it was just one bird anyway, and he wouldn’t bother with it.
Finally, after many shouted orders, Blondie did go into the brush. Murphy waited. No bird came out. Strange, he thought, for Blondie never made a mistake. He waited longer.
At last he saw the dog come bounding out of the brush, headed uphill. He had something in his mouth. Murphy thought it was a bird, and since it looked all bloody, he was getting ready to give Blondie a scolding for “mouthing” it.
And then to his horror he saw that it wasn’t a bird at all – but that Blondie’s head was a solid mass of porcupine quills.
Murphy says it is the only time he ever heard of a porcupine in this part of the country. Blondie had simply rushed in and dived onto the porcupine, and the result was nearly fatal.
They rushed Blondie to the nearest animal hospital, at Eureka, 40 miles away. The vets put him under anaesthetic and kept him there longer than they had ever kept an animal before. They stacked up the quills in bunches of 25, and when they were through that night they had taken more than 600 quills out of Blondie’s mouth, face and ears.
For three weeks he was a terrifically sick dog, but he came through it. Murphy gave him a long rest, with no hunting at all, and in a few weeks he was in perfect shape.
Then Murphy went to Mexico on his annual hunting trip. It’s always a big party, with a bunch of San Francisco sportsmen making the trip. They take their own dogs, and for years Blondie has been the acknowledged peer of the pack, man or dog.
It’s quitting time, he decides
They drove several miles from the camp to the place where they were to start walking. Gear was unpacked and the hunters made ready. The dogs were turned loose, and the hunters started off. Stan Murphy walked up the hill a little piece.
Usually Blondie was so eager for the hunt that Murphy would have to keep ordering him to “heel” as they started out. But suddenly he realized that Blondie wasn’t ahead of him He stopped and looked back. And where was his great hunting dog?
Sitting in the front seat of the car, looking out the window!
Blondie has never gone hunting again. He simply made his decision and stuck to it. Still in his prime, still the greatest hunter in California, he just quit.
Murphy is not sure what lay back of it, in the dog’s mind. It seems logical to think that the experience with the porcupine caused it. But Murphy doesn’t think so. He feels that somewhere into the dog’s consciousness there just came a voice which said, “You’ve worked too hard and you’ve worked too long. You don’t have to do it any longer. To hell with it.”
He thinks Blondie simply retired one day, all of a sudden, just because he wanted to.
That happened four years ago. Blondie is 12 now, and age is in him. He sleeps about 22 hours a day. He lies in the great redwood lodge here in front of the fireplace, and he twitches and jerks in his dreams. When he gets up it is with a struggle, but he is still gentle and lovable and sweet. He has children and grandchildren, and some of them are great hunting dogs too, but none can approach Blondie before he quit.
Hunters tell me they never heard of such a thing happening before. Murphy starts his story with, “Did you ever hear of the day Blondie quit?” Instead of being disappointed, he seems to admire his great Blondie for the firmness of his decision. And so do I. What Blondie did is what I’ve wanted to do for 20 years. Maybe this will give me courage.