A Famous Dog Story Poem by Francis Duggan

The story I am about to tell you it well may be true
For the one who told it to me for to give him his due
Is one who does not make up stories nor neither is he
One prone to imagine it would seem to me.

We were swapping dog stories myself and old Lew
Of dogs we heard tell of and dogs that we knew
Of dogs who are honoured in story and rhyme
The history of their greatness has lived on in time.

But the best dog story he told me was one I heard before
When I was a young school-boy going back five decades or more
The greatest dog story that he can recall
Perhaps is the greatest dog story of all.

A story from early Spring the weather was cold
The red shorthorn calf had strayed from her mother a young five days old
In the field by the farm-yard the cow bellowed around
But her calf did not reply and was not to be found.

The farmer searched for her with Shep his brown cattle dog
But no trace of the calf in the field by the bog
He then thought the calf may have strayed and in a bog hole drown
Still no trace of the young heifer though the bog he searched up and down.

But in the gray dawning of the very next day
Old Shep the brown dog to the yard made his way
With the red heifer calf suckling on the end of his tail
That the clever dog had dipped into a full milk pail.

The mother cow was delighted her calf she did lick
And none more relieved than the old farmer Mick
As he patted his dog you're a hero he did say
This a famous dog story that lives on today.