Greyfriars Bobby

This is the true story of a real dog that lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, many years ago.  He was a Skye terrier, and his name was Bobby.  He belonged to a man named John Gray, who worked as a night watchman for the Edinburgh City Police.  John Gray was really a gardener, but when he moved to Edinburgh, it was wintertime, and there was no work for gardeners at that time.  So that's why he started working as a night watchman.  And as part of his job, he had to have a dog.  So he got Bobby.  In Great Britain, policemen are called "bobbies," so that may be how Bobby got his name.

A Skye terrier doesn't really seem like what you would think of as a big, fierce watchdog, but maybe he was good at barking or at biting criminals on the ankle.  Anyway, he and John Gray worked together every night, doing their job of watching, and they loved each other.

Then after about two years, John Gray got very sick with tuberculosis, and he died.  The date when he died was February 15, 1858.  This was a very sad thing to happen to Bobby because Bobby did not want to be without his dad.  So after John Gray got buried, Bobby would go and lie on his grave all the time.  The grave was in a cemetery by a church called Greyfriars Kirk.  Kirk is a Scottish word that means church.  Scottish people talk funny sometimes and use different words for stuff, and kirk is a good example of this.

Anyway, Bobby stayed by his dad's grave for 14 years, which is a really long time.  There was a pub close to there where John Gray and Bobby used to go together, and after John Gray died, the people who owned the pub fed Bobby a lot of his meals.  Also some of the people who lived close to Greyfriars Kirk knew Bobby and would feed him or let him stay with them during bad weather.  But a lot of the time Bobby stayed by his dad's grave because he was a very faithful little dog.

Finally, in 1872, Bobby died.  His friends wanted to bury him in the cemetery, by John Gray, but it was not allowed for dogs to be buried there.  So they buried him just outside the cemetery gate.  And then a nice woman named Lady Burdett-Coutts had a statue made of Bobby, with a little fountain for dogs to drink out of.

A long, long time after that, in 1981, the people of Edinburgh put up a nice marker by Bobby's grave.  And this is what it says:
          Greyfriars Bobby
          died 14th January 1872
          aged 16 years
          Let his loyalty and devotion 
          be a lesson to us all.

Mom has been to Edinburgh twice and has actually seen the statue and Bobby's grave and John Gray's grave in person.  Also she bought a book about Greyfriars Bobby, and she read it, but she doesn't think she has it anymore, or if she does have it, it's in a box somewhere in the basement.  But now Bobby has his very own website because he is a modern little dog, so you can go there if you want to read more about him.