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

by Brian Patrick Duggan (Author)

"The little known history of General George Armstrong Custer and his wife, Libbie Custer, as wholehearted dog lovers. At the time of his death at Little Bighorn, they owned a rollicking pack of forty hunting dogs, including Scottish Deerhounds, Russian Wolfhounds, Greyhounds and Foxhounds. Told from a dog owner's perspective"--

Front Jacket

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.

Author Biography

Brian Patrick Duggan is the author of Saluki: The Desert Hound and the English Travelers Who Brought It to the West, and numerous articles on canine history which have been published in AKC Family Dog, AKC Gazette, Greasy Grass: The Journal of the Custer Battlefield Historical & Museum Association and Research Review: The Journal of the Little Big Horn Associates, among others. He is a retired university technology educator, an active American Kennel Club judge, and the editor for McFarland's Dogs in Our World series.