General Custer, Libbie Custer and Their Dogs: A Passion for Hounds, from the Civil War to Little Bighorn

by Brian Patrick Duggan

Overview

General George Armstrong Custer and his wife, Libbie Custer, were wholehearted dog lovers. At the time of his death at Little Bighorn, they owned a rollicking pack of 40 hunting dogs, including Scottish Deerhounds, Russian Wolfhounds, Greyhounds and Foxhounds. Told from a dog owner's perspective, this biography covers their first dogs during the Civil War and in Texas; hunting on the Kansas and Dakota frontiers; entertaining tourist buffalo hunters, including a Russian Archduke, English aristocrats and P. T. Barnum (all of whom presented the general with hounds); Custer's attack on the Washita village (when he was accused of strangling his own dogs); and the 7th Cavalry's march to Little Bighorn with an analysis of rumors about a Last Stand dog. The Custers' pack was re-homed after his death in the first national dog rescue effort. Well illustrated, the book includes an appendix giving depictions of the Custers' dogs in art, literature and film.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476669540
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	03/22/2019
Series:	Dogs in Our World
Pages:	361
Sales rank:	728,265
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.73(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Brian Patrick Duggan is a canine historian and author of several books and numerous articles about dogs in history. He is a retired university technology educator and an American Kennel Club judge.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword by Paul L. Hedren
Preface
A Note to the Reader
Prologue
1: Judge Bacon’s Daughter
• Tail Piece: The ­Havelock-Hollywood-Custer Connection
2: That Custer Boy
• Tail Piece: A Cadet and His Dog
3: Armstrong Ascendant
• Tail Piece: P.T. Barnum’s Civil War Dog Show
4: My Husband’s Dogs
• Tail Pieces: The Sporting Ritual of Foxhunting in America
• Slave Tracking and Prison Guard Dogs
5: The Texas Pack
• Tail Pieces: Libbie Custer and Persian Greyhounds—Two Degrees of Separation
• Dogs as Property in the 19th Century
6: Kansas—Hunting Game and Chasing Indians
• Tail Pieces: Scotch Stag Hounds and Chinese Edible Dogs—Victorian Breed Terminology
• Army Dogs: Birth, Sutures and Death
7: Kansas and Indian Territory: Bloody Snow
• Tail Piece: Did Armstrong Kill His Own Dogs at Washita?
8: The Tourist Hunters
• Tail Piece: Plagiarizing Lord Byron
• Barnum and the Grand Hoboken Buffalo Hunt
 9: Blue Grass, Pvt. Burkman, and the Grand Duke Alexis
• Tail Piece: Russian Wolfhounds Emigrate to America
10: Paw Prints on the Yellowstone
• Tail Piece: Sir St. George Gore’s Greyhounds Populate the West
• Sighthounds vs. Antelope
11: Fort Lincoln and the Black Hills
• Tail Piece: California Joe and His Custer Hound
• Tailless Dogs
12: The Last Dog Deals and the March to Little Bighorn
• Tail Piece: Custer’s First Stand
13: Dog Rumors and the Last Stand Hoax
• Tail Piece: Rusty’s Improbable History
14: The Widow Custer’s Burden
Epilogue: Custer’s Last Hound
Appendix: General Custer’s Dogs in Art, Literature and Film
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Duggan delivers a well-researched and elegantly written work...Custer’s hounds, instead of being shunted into the footnotes, are front and center, brought vividly to life by a careful historian who is also an authority on sighthound breeds.... Duggan’s book is a love story: Man loves woman, woman loves man, and both love dogs.... The field of Custer scholarship has been enriched by Duggan’s work, and it is hoped that future biographers of history’s heroes and rogues will learn from its example.”—AKC Gazette

From the Publisher