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Saturday, August 22nd in Tampa. Witnessing MMA Legends final fight. Chris Cyborg, one of the greatest in history. She's an absolute pioneer in the sport. Defends her PFL world title?
One last time. Unforgettable and got you. My unforgettable career. Saturday, August 22nd, live from Benchmark International Arena. For tickets, visit pfl.info/slash tampa.
Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs.
Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's get real about skincancer.com. Fill your tank and fill yourself with new experiences. With old friends, new ones, and the next generation ready to ride. Get to living with Harley-Davidson Motorcycles. When your day is just beginning and full of possibilities, hit the open road and remember why you want to ride.
Visit Independence Harley-Davidson and see what freedom looks like. Click the screen now and start your ride at h-d.com/slash ride. Harley-Davidson Motorcycles. Ride. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories.
While Gene the Collie is considered by many to be the first bona fide Hollywood superstar with four legs and a tail, For most Americans, the first real dog celebrities weren't in movies at all. Here to share the story of Railroad Dogs, America's first true animal celebrities, is Paul Kudenares, author of Go West Young Dog. Take it away, Paul. Back in the day, a dog was famous because it was expensive. You know, it was like a St.
Bernard that cost $10,000. That was only of interest to high society people and, you know, the dog show crowd. We effectively invented pets as we know them in the 19th century. Of course, we had always had animals around, but pets as we know them, they're kind of a product of the Industrial Revolution and people moving into giant metropolises. It was an entirely new concept at the time.
There is a very famous case about a dog named old Drum. Drum was a dog that was owned in rural Missouri by a guy named Burden. Burden's neighbor shot Drum dead because Drum was crossing his land, kills this guy's dog, and this guy decides to sue for damages. People think this guy's nuts. It's like, what, you're gonna sue your own neighbor, the guy who lives on the next property, you're gonna sue your neighbor for shooting your dog?
Are you crazy?
Well, not only was he gonna sue his neighbor for shooting his dog. He didn't just want compensation for the cost of a hunting dog, which in rural Missouri in the 1860s would be almost nothing. He wanted compensation for what he had been deprived, for the companionship and the love he had lost. And everyone thought this guy was absolutely out of his mind. Animals were really not that much different than tools.
Anyway, this guy Burden finds himself a brilliant lawyer by the name of George Vest. George Vest is also a dog lover. He understands the historical importance of this case, and he vows to win this case or apologize to every dog in Missouri. And he wins that case.
So for the first time ever, anywhere in the entire world, the court rules that the companionship Of an animal has tangible value.
So, no, there really weren't animal celebrities before that time. A couple military dogs that had gained fame in Europe, but that was about it. Animals were not celebrities.
So as I said, back in the day, you know, Humane Society, more an oxymoron than an organization. It was not fun to be astray on the streets of the big cities back in the day. Often they would be abused, and there were even riflemen who would go out on the city streets and hunt them down. It was thought that they were doing a civic duty by culling the numbers of strays.
So it was very dangerous to be astray, and many of them found a kind of sense of security in the railroads, in the rail yards, and on the trains. And these dogs not only had an important role in canine history and railroad history, they had a vital role in American history that we've simply forgotten about. We complete the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. In other words, right after the Civil War.
So the railroads not only unify the continent for the first time, they kind of reunified the country. They were part of that process of reunification.
So the railroads had a very big symbolic role in American culture. And look, dogs were traveling on trains all over the world. But it was different in America. These railroads were crossing what we considered unknown lands. These railroads, these trains were kind of like the dragons of yore, but rumbling across the plains, these giant steel beasts.
And they held this vital role in American lore in a way they didn't in any other country. And at the same time, we were building like crazy in the 19th century. By the end of the 19th century, There were more miles of track in the United States than the rest of the world combined. And so these dogs weren't just riding. They were riding across an entire continent and they were conquering that continent.
They became larger than life. And there really were no canine celebrities before these dogs. The first famous one, actually, in the 1860s, a railroad dog riding out of Louisville by the name of Jake, who traveled through Appalachia and his interest was somewhat higher-minded. He would chase livestock, but not because they were congregated around on the tracks. One of the weirdest quirks ever recorded for a railroad dog was this dog.
The crew members who traveled with them said that Jake was very concerned that livestock not look upon his trains with scorn or disdain. Jake wanted to make sure that as they passed the fields, the livestock was looking upon the trains in a respectful manner and He would jump down and chase them around with snapping jaws to teach them a little respect for a passing rail car. Yeah, I don't know. I think a dog, I guess, would probably have a better idea what the glance of a cow or pig or sheep might convey than we would, because I don't think I can tell disdain in a cow's eyes, but maybe a dog can. But mostly at that time, they were known a niche thing.
They were on the sideline. They were marginalia and they were known by the back page newspaper readers or, you know, passed down through verbal accounts among railroad employees. But by the 1890s, they really start to become a big deal. And it's mostly due to a dog that rode out of Albany by the name of Railroad Jack. And he kind of becomes, like in modern terms, he's just kind of like the Brad Pitt of dogs.
He's kind of got the it factor. Railroad Jack was a little terrier who just had this zest for riding. He starts riding on the express cars, Wells Fargo and American Express, and he really becomes hooked on it.
Some of these other dogs have really been riding only regionally. Railroad Jack is riding everywhere. And in 1892, he takes the railroad dogs all the way to the top. On the 4th of July, no less. He heads out from Albany all the way to San Francisco.
It winds up in the newspapers, you know, and becomes a very big story, syndicated around the country. People respond to that. Even as he's traveling en route, there's this air among people in every place he stops that they're part of some historic moment by just being in this dog's path. People start giving him gifts, you know, things a dog could never need.
Someone gives him a skull, a human skull with a note on it that says, I hope the soul of this skull will aid you in your journeys or something like that. You know, they give him a pistol, a cannonball, they give him a razor. They give him a gigantic woman's shoe made. For someone named Big Sal in Chicago.
So they're just ladening him down with gifts. And he makes it all the way to San Francisco. Big deal. And then he turns around from San Francisco, not only crossing the country, he travels all the way down to Florida. When he gets down to Florida, down at the very tip of Florida, someone puts him on a boat and he goes all the way down to Havana.
And Jack returns to Florida with a shiny tag on his collar that says, Jack ate lengua de cibolo in Havana. In other words, Jack ate tongue of ox in Havana, Cuba.
So he not only has traversed the United States, he's gone all the way to Cuba and then come back, he's gone to the very edge of the map and sailed off. And in addition, Railroad Jack also traveled up into Canada. He was in the same baggage car with a coffin of a very large man, and this coffin of this obese man falls onto his paw, and he's unable to extricate himself. He's stuck, you know, with his paw trapped under this giant dead guy, and he's forced to, they said in the newspaper, self-amputate to bite off part of his own paw.
So, you know, like I said, there's this element of danger to it as well, this element of adventure. And Jack was, in fact, So famous that he winds up dognapped by a circus owner, a kind of two-bit PT Barnum by the name of Marion S. Robinson up in Buffalo, who dognaps this dog when he arrives in Buffalo and kind of steals away with him and puts him in a circus and starts selling tickets to see him because he was that famous. People are going to come out and pay money to see. It's like, oh my God, that's the famous railroad jack.
And he's part of this circus. And the railroad workers have to get together and go up there and tell this Robinson guy: you know, you release our dog, we're going to beat you to a pulp. This dog had a very lengthy career. He just so happened to be a dying dog in 1892. He was on his last legs in this kind of last run across the country.
So that just adds to it, of course. You know, it's not just a dog traveling on his own, a famous railroad dog traveling on his own across the country. He's a dying dog. He doesn't have long to live. He's been diagnosed with a fatty degeneration of the heart.
So it's kind of like not just this last lap, but this last hurrah. And it really does become in what terms that we would consider viral. This dog story. By the time he gets back to Albany, he is the biggest dog in the world. The reason these dogs become famous.
The reason they become heroes is because they're pursuing freedom on their own terms. If you were, say, a factory worker on the East Coast, you're working long hours at a job you're probably never really going to ever be free of until your back is broken. But these dogs kind of found a loophole. They found a loophole on those trains. And for a lot of people on that Sunday morning newspaper crowd who are reading the stories about these dogs' adventures and travels and misadventures, because a lot of them would get into trouble.
They became a kind of escapist fantasy. And that's why, that's why they became heroes to people. Like I say, this kind of escapist fantasy, like, boy, I wish I could just jump aboard a train and leave and go west the way these dogs had. You know, go west, young man. We think of it as the clarion call of the nage, but you went west with a purpose.
You went west to achieve prosperity. You went west to do well for yourself. You know, you didn't just go out on an adventure. And these dogs were out on an adventure. That's what it's about, I think.
It's this kind of, you know, existence. existential quest for liberty. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monty Montgomery. And his special thanks to Paul Kudenaris. What a story he told about, well, dogs and what they became thanks to the Industrial Revolution.
The STORY OF RAILROAD JACK Here on our American story. Saturday. August 22nd in Tampa, witnessing MMA Legends final fight. Chris Cyborg, one of the greatest in history. She's an absolute pioneer in the sport.
Defends her PFL world title. One last time. Unforgettable and got your money. To an unforgettable career. Saturday, August 22nd, live from Benchmark International Arena.
For tickets, visit pfl.info/slash tampa. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter.
Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's getreal about skincancer.com. Upgrade to elite checking from America's Christian Credit Union and earn up to 4% APY, plus everyday perks and access to your paycheck up to two days early with early pay. Don't settle. Choose checking that rewards you and aligns with your values.
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And CUA insured. Hmm. Keeping a working forest growing takes a massive commitment. That's why working forest professionals plant over 1 billion seedlings annually in the US, ensuring more trees are planted than harvested. But it takes more than planting to sustain these ecosystems.
It means caring for everything in the forest, from clean water to thriving wildlife. Because when we take care of our forests, they'll thrive for generations. Learn more at WorkingForceInitiative.com.
