Photo of the Day

What is a dog for?

He was a stray.

A small mixed-breed dog with a short tail who needed a home and a friend.

And he found both when Robert Conroy, an infantry recruit undergoing basic training on the fields of Yale University, took him in.

Robert named the little dog "Stubby" and he became the unit mascot.

Robert Conroy and Stubby. After the war, Stubby accompanied Robert to Georgetown Law School, where Stubby became the mascot of the football team. Stubby died of old age in Robert's arms in 1926.

Stubby accompanied these young men out on the field.

He took part in their drills, learned to respond to bugle calls and, with training (and treats) he would salute with his right paw.

And the commanding officers let Stubby stay.

The little dog lifted the young men’s spirits.

Later, when the men boarded a troop ship to sail to France, Stubby stowed away, wrapped in an overcoat.

And when he was discovered in camp in France, the company’s commander let Stubby stay on, too.

The commander knew what was coming.

The little dog would be good for the men.

Stubby was issued special orders allowing him to accompany his unit to the front lines.

And he was there with them as these young men saw the worst of it, through four offensives and seventeen major battles.

It was hard.

Stubby got injured: first, in a gas attack, and then, shrapnel struck him during an artillery attack.

But he recovered in a hospital and returned to the front and learned to awaken his unit to stealth gas attacks and locate wounded men on the battlefield.

And Stubby captured his very own German by biting him in the leg.

The little dog received many decorations and, after the war, appeared in countless parades.

All the papers wrote about him.

Gen. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces during WWI, presents an award to Stubby at a White House ceremony, 1921. Stubby had become a national celebrity and would meet with Presidents Wilson, Harding and Coolidge.

News stories about Stubby present him in a light-hearted [‘isn’t that cute’] sort of way, and I suppose that’s understandable.

But Robert and the other young men witnessed and engaged in the worst form of savagery in France.

Even now, the scenes of battle on the Western Front are shocking.

But these guys had little Stubby waiting for them in camp at night, eager to sit in their laps and lick their faces.

No matter what had happened that day.

After Stubby passed away, a taxidermist preserved his skin over a plaster cast. It is now held in the Smithsonian.

So, what is a dog for?

Stubby would say ‘he’s there to fill a hole in your heart, no matter how big, if only you’ll let him.’

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I’ll see you on Monday.

— Brenda

Banner image: Stubby with his unit on the Yale Army basic training field, 1917.

My boy, Bill.