“He was just a dog. Mister-- that’s all;
And all of us boys called him Pug;
He was black, crippled and not very tall,
But he’d fight at the drop of hat for us all.”
On April 18, 1912, the Ridgeway Journal published the sad obituary of a dog named Pug. Pug, an “old black dog known to all in Ridgeway and a friend to everybody who was kind to him.” He lived at the home of his masters, the Spragg family. “Speaking in a way, the old dog has raised every boy in the town; everybody swore by him and in his death we lose a friend that cannot be replaced.”
One evening, he was shot by a man “because he had a grudge against Pug’s owners” and because the dog had been barking in the street by his home.
The poor pup survived for several days. He was cared for by the boys on a bed of straw and rags in the back of the Ridgeway Journal office. Many inquired after his welfare during the next several days, but Pug continued to suffer until a boy,“one of Pug’s best friends”, ended Pug’s suffering as an act of kindness.
The editor of the paper described the man “(we hate to refer to him as a man)” as a brute, “lower by far than the dog he killed.” The writer went on to say that the “old faithful dog stands a much better change of reaching that spiritual mansion” than the one who shot him. The article ended with “This is written with no apologies, to anyone.”
