J. Allen Boone - Letters to Strongheart

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Text originally published in 1939 under the same title.

Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

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Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

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LETTERS TO STRONGHEART

BY

J. ALLEN BOONE

Contents

TO OUIDA RUSSELL

It you are one of the many millions who came to know and love Strongheart through the medium of motion pictures, you can perhaps understand how anyone might like to write letters to him. As a matter of fact, so many of you did that that the volume of his mail, when he was at the height of his career as a film celebrity, was a constant surprise to the officials of the Hollywood post office. Perhaps you still cherish one of his photographs with his autograph in one of the lower corners. He liked autographing things. He did it by placing one of his front feet on a special inkpad and then pressing it down on whatever needed the signature.

Transforming a prize-winning, police-trained German shepherd dog into a movie star, building dramatic plays around him, and providing a cast of human actors to support him was a novel idea at the time. And a very successful one too. The first film created such widespread interest and enthusiasm that Strongheart became an overnight sensation. Within a few months, his fame had become international. Thereafter, each succeeding picture added to his reputation and deepened the affection men, women, and children all over the world had for him. Much of this, no doubt, was due to the fact that few people had ever before seen a dog of his type, size, intelligence, and accomplishments in action, plus the oddity of a dog as the leading man in movie dramas.

One day when his success was at its peak, word was flashed from Hollywood that Strongheart was dead. A sudden illness, and then the end. The entire world was shocked and saddened. To his many admirers, it was a personal loss. To the picture industry, it meant the loss of its most unique performer, and one of its best box-office attractions. As time moved along in its swift pace and with its kaleidoscopic changes, people began dropping Strongheart from their thinking areas, except as a memory of a dog that had been thrilling to watch but was now dead. I could not do this, though. Strongheart happens to be my pal. He was my pal. He still is my pal. Circumstances sent him into my individual mental world of awareness, and as long as he got in there and added so much to it, I shall take precious good care that nothing shoves him out again. And I can do that, because I happen to be the one who thinks about the things that go on in my individual world of awareness.

As a citizen of the Cosmos, I refuse to give my consent to the popular belief that any friend of mine, whether classified as a human or an animal, is dead and gone forever, simply because my limited, faulty, material senses are unable to identify him in their immediate vicinity. I have learned to look at life with something more real than material senses. And that something, let me add, concedes no reality whatsoever to the phenomenon of death. I mention this because as you turn the next few pages you will come upon letters that I have written to what the world regards as a dead dog; and since writing letters to dead dogs is not orthodox procedure among the human species, you are entitled to some sort of explanation. The letters must speak for themselves. But as you read them, may I remind you that they were written to Strongheart. That automatically puts you in the position of having to read them over his shoulder, so to speak. I do hope it will be an interesting experience for you.

Now about Strongheart. As you probably remember, he shot through the entertainment world like a luminous meteor. First came The Silent Call. Then, Brawn of the North. Then, The Love Master. Then, White Fang. Before his appearance in pictures, the German shepherd dog with police training was little known in the United States. But he more than made up for it after his dramatic arrival. He not only popularized his breed in this country, but stimulated an unprecedented interest in dogs throughout the world.

The two people responsible for his success were Jane Murfin, the distinguished writer of stage and screen plays, and Larry Trimble, a motion-picture director with unusual gifts for persuading wild and domestic animals to perform at their best in front of cameras. Trimble was Stronghearts tutor and director. My relationships with the dog were entirely those of a friend. For quite a period of time we lived togetherkept house together as a matter of fact. I had nothing to do with his education or the making of his pictures. When I first met him, he was so well-educated and knew so much more than I did about so many important things in the universe that I had to let him teach me in order to keep intelligent company with him. He was an amazing dog in public performance, but he was even more so as a friend in private life.

Stronghearts kennel name was Etzel von Oeringen. He was born in Germany, the son of Nores von der Kriminal Polizei, an undefeated champion for some time. The only dog ever capable of topping him in show and field trials was his own son, Etzel. Along about this time Jane Murfin and Larry Trimble were searching and having the world searched for an unusual type of dog to be starred in a series of motion pictures. Hundreds were inspected and eliminated. Then they saw Etzel von Oeringen. They had found their dog. He was renamed Strongheart.

Strongheart was three years old and weighed 115 pounds, his best fighting weight, when he arrived in the United States. He was a magnificent-looking animal, but had been so militantly trained that he was savage in both mood and actions. He was dangerous even for the men who handled him. He did not know how to walk like an ordinary dog. He marched like a soldier. He was a soldier. He was a highly trained military dog. A fighting cog in a thoroughly regimented national fighting machine. Strongheart was formidable either in attack or defense. He had everything a military and police dog requiredsize, strength, speed, endurance, courage, fearlessness, aggressiveness, catlike agility, and long, sharp fangs with which to hack and slash. From a crouching position he could leap over the head of a man six feet tall, and do it with what seemed to be effortless ease. That will give you some idea of the power he could turn on when necessary.

Stronghearts severe training had taken all the natural initiative and spontaneity out of him. He had no sense of fun, no joy, no affection, and did not know how to play. They had taken these things out of him in the process of turning him into a four-legged dreadnought. Then Larry Trimble took over his education. Now it is always a significant event when Trimble takes over an animal for educational purposes, for he is a nonconformist of the first magnitude in his methods. Instead of the more or less conventional procedure in which a superior being compels an inferior one to follow certain traditional routines, Trimble treats his wild and domestic animal students as individual rational units, with unlimited capacities for development and accomplishment. It isnt a theory with him. He makes it work.