The Noble Newfoundland Dog: A History in Stories, Legends and the Occasional Tall Tale

Liz Dennett is a public service librarian in the Science and Technology
Library at the University of Alberta.

Bruce Hynes has compiled a loving tribute to the Newfoundland dog with
this book of stories about the large, gentle breed. He begins by
exploring the most likely theories of the dog’s heritage, and then
chronicles the breed’s near brush with extinction from 1780 to the
beginning of the 20th century, during which time there were a series of
orders by the local Newfoundland governance to destroy the dogs.
Luckily, their value was appreciated on distant shores and the breed was
able to recover by carefully breeding exported animals to the remaining
native stock.

The rest of the book is filled with stories of the Newfoundland that
demonstrate all of the qualities that the breed is well known for, such
as its good-natured temperament, strength, intelligence, protectiveness,
gentleness with children, ability to make water rescues, and even its
uncanny sense when people are in trouble and need help. Most of the
stories are well documented—though in a few cases truth and legend
have certainly become blurred. In one fascinating example, a
Newfoundland almost certainly changed the course of history when it
saved Napoleon from drowning as he tried to escape the island of Elba
shortly before the Battle of Waterloo. Indeed, the water-rescue stories
are numerous and amazing, with some dogs swimming to the point of utter
exhaustion to rescue humans from shipwrecks and other dangers. In one
case a child had difficulty learning to swim because his dog kept
rescuing him every time he went in the water.

The book includes a number of illustrations and photographs of the
dogs. Most interesting are the reproductions of historical paintings and
drawings that show the change in appearance of the breed from the 1700s
until the present. For anyone who has ever met a Newfoundland dog, this
well-researched book will be a joy to read.