Two Loyal Dogs and a “Forever Faithful” Lesson Learned

My church is a little different than most. Instead of a preacher giving the main sermon during worship services every Sunday, it’s members of the congregation who are asked. They offer a mixture of personal experience, historic happenings and scripture to teach lessons.

On one particular Sunday, I was attending church services in Ronan, Montana, where an older gentleman said he was going to do three things: relate the tale of one dog, then relate the tale of another dog and then tie everything together.

Old Drum
(Credit: Abernaki)

First, he related the tale of George Graham Vest. He served two years in the U.S. Senate in the late 1800s but is best known for a court case. In 1869, he represented a man named Charles Burden whose hunting dog, named Old Drum, was shot and killed by a nearby sheep farmer. Burden sued for damages and wanted $150 (equivalent to $3,070 in 2020), the maximum amount allowed by law at the time.  

Vest promised he would win the case. During closing arguments, he referred to no previous testimony and instead delivered what became known as “The Eulogy of the Dog.”

Gentlemen of the jury: A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

George Vest
(Credit: Library of Congress Prints &
Photographs
Brandy-Hand Photograph Collection)

If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.

After hearing Vest’s heartfelt, passionate words, a jury returned a verdict in favor of Vest, his client and his client’s dog. Today, a statue of Old Drum stands in front of the Johnson County Courthouse in Warrensburg, Missouri.

The Sunday speaker then related the story of “Shep, Forever Faithful.” Shep belonged to an unknown sheep herder in Fort Benton, Montana, a small town in Montana’s Missouri Breaks Country (where I hunted a few years ago). The sheep herder fell ill and went to Fort Benton for treatment. Shep followed. The man died just a few days later. His family called for his body to be returned back East so the casket was loaded onto the train. And Shep was there to watch the train drive away carrying his master’s body.

What’s amazing is what happened again and again and again. Shep returned to the train yard every day, four times a day, as each train pulled in and continued on to the next stop. He entered, watched and waited for his master, the sheep herder, to return. Shep continued his vigil on a daily basis for more than five years from August 1936 until January 1942! Over time, the dog showed its years and its health suffered. In apparently icy conditions, Shep slipped and/or did not see a train coming, was hit and died.

A few days later, nearly everyone in Fort Benton attended Shep’s funeral where someone read, “The Eulogy of the Dog,” George Vest’s classic “sermon” given 72 years earlier some 1,300 miles away. Members of the local Boy Scout troop then carried Shep’s coffin and placed it on a  bluff overlooking town. Today, there is a sculpture of Shep on the Missouri River in Fort Benton and his collar and bowl are in a local museum.

The church speaker emphasized the amount of loyalty and dedication shown by man’s best friend, particularly shown by Shep. He then related some scriptures and had each of us in attendance ponder about our loyalty to Jesus Christ. Are we as dedicated to the Lord as Shep was to his master? What do we need to do to do the same? How do we need to act?

The speaker then read the scripture verses below.

John 14:15: “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

1 Nephi 3:7: "I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.” (Book of Mormon)

Doctrine & Covenants 93:20: “For if you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace.”

Alma 9:13: "Behold, do ye not remember the words which he spake unto Lehi, saying that inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land? And again it is said that: Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord." (Book of Mormon)

Matthew 25:13: “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.”

So the moral of this man's Sunday address is become like Shep, watch, do and be “forever faithful!”