SHEP: The story of a dog

What follows is a true story. Years ago, my wife and I visited the grave of this incredible dog in Fort Benton, Montana and I was so fascinated at what I head about this famous dog, I subsequently wrote this story for an animal’s rights organization.

Fort Benton, Montana, straddles Highway 87, that lonely road which runs between Havre to the north and Great Falls to the south. Some will say, perhaps with tongue in cheek, that although Fort Benton is nevertheless a mere speck on the map of Montana; it does have an interesting past. It was on this site that the famed explorers, Lewis and Clark passed in June 1805 on their way to the Pacific. This town established in 1864, was an important river port on the Missouri River and the head of navigation for the westbound steamboats coming from St. Louis, right up to the middle of the Twentieth Century. These facts alone would not give Fort Benton world recognition, but something did. It was the dog.

From 1937 until 1942, a collie called Shep; put this small town in the world news, not because of his beauty; which he didn't possess in any case-nor because of some spectacular act of bravery, but rather because of his faithfulness to his master and friend. If perhaps you feel that faithfulness in a dog hardly merits world recognition, then read on and form your own opinion as to the virtue of faithfulness of animals.

Shep was owned by a sheepherder who had moved into Montana from the eastern seaboard to raise sheep. Shep and his master became fast and firm friends because there is a bond between a sheepherder and his dog. Both depend on each other for their livelihood and for companionship in the lonely hills. It was never discovered just how their friendship began but many a friendship, long, loyal and self-sacrificing, between a man and his dog, originate from an utterance of a kind word or the giving of a morsel of food to a hungry dog.

Then in August 1936, that bond between the two was forever severed. One of them died. Shep survived his master. He watched with sadness, the body of his friend being placed in a pine box and then trotted behind the vehicle that conveyed it to the train station. He stood by, heaviness in heart as he watched the men place the box into the baggage car. Shortly after the baggage car door was closed, the train slowly pulled out of the station, its whistle blowing mournfully like a dirge at a funeral. Shep raced along side the train until the pain in his heart could take no more. Then he returned to Fort Benton, perhaps to ponder his future.

Before the next train had arrived, from the direction the last one had proceeded. Shep was on the station platform awaiting its arrival. He was waiting for his friend to return. The dog had no way of knowing that his friend was on his way east to be buried by his family. However, when the train stopped, it didn't take long for Shep to realize that his friend wasn't on the train. As each day passed, he faithfully waited for each train's arrival so that he would be the first to greet his friend on his return to Fort Benton. The days went into weeks and the weeks went into months. Not a train slipped into Fort Benton that the dog wasn't there to greet it.

At first, no one really paid attention to the dog and when the station personnel finally did take notice, they threw stones at it to shoo it away. It is odd indeed when you realize that once a dog recognizes kindness from a human being, it takes more than stones to chase him away from others who resemble the one who originally showed him kindness.

As the months passed and the leaves of autumn changed their colours, Shep grew gaunt, his fur; a mere covering of skin and bones. Most if not all dogs can fare on their own but there has to be a motive to survive other than just staving off hunger alone. Shep managed to forage around the backs of restaurants and among the garbage bins but the eating of rotten meat is hardly suitable for a dog's diet. Besides, he needed to spend practically all of his time at the train station and that gave him little time for anything else.

The winters in the eastern half of Montana are not kind to men or beast, least of all to a homeless dog on the verge of starvation. Thousands of cattle die under the ‘big skies’ of Montana when the death winds carrying the freezing sleet begin blowing across the unprotected Great Plains of North America, of which Montana is a part.

Shep wasn't a dumb animal. He knew that he needed some protection from the freezing blasts of winter so he dug out a spot for himself under the station platform to ward off the freezing winds of winter. His diggings weren't really warm as warmth goes, but with what fur he still had covering his lean body, his meagre shelter under the platform kept him alive.

Throughout the cold and winter months, the dog waited for the arrival of each train as it pulled into the station. He would leave his shelter and stand on the platform; his body shaking from both the cold and the anticipation of greeting his long-absent friend---his eyes opened wide, to encompass the entire platform as the passengers got off the train. With the realization that his friend was not on the train, he would return to his shelter, or in the alternative, forage for more food. If it was the need for food that took him away from the diggings, his absence was short for he wouldn't take any chance of missing the one train that would carry his friend home.

By the time the warm breezes of spring caressed the area of Fort Benton, the townspeople and the station personnel had become gradually apprised of what the dog was doing there at their train station. Many of the townspeople admired Shep and recognized the dog's vigil for what it was. They, along with fifty sheepherders from around the country, wanted to adopt Shep and care for him. Dog homes in a couple of states offered to give him a home and a life he so richly deserved. The station master and his staff---who unofficially adopted Shep by this time, gently refused the kind offers of the many that wrote or came personally to make their requests.

Word spread of the lonely vigil from community to community and then from newspaper to newspaper until Shep's name and his vigil became a household name. Many who had collies, named their dogs Shep in hope that having that name would instill in their pets, that virtue that was instilled in the dog at Fort Benton.

Many of those wishing to adopt Shep didn't realize that when one adopts a dog, that person not only must except the responsibility of nurturing and caring for the animal, one must also be prepared to conform, to some extent, to the dog's will. To conform to Shep's will would be to recognize that the train station was not only a home to him---humble as it was---but it was also a post to which he could not leave lest he miss the one thing that was most important to him---to his existence---the meeting of his friend when he steps off the train.

As the story of his vigil spread, many of the passengers on the great Northern trains passing through Fort Benton, would get off and pet and caress the dog. Dining car stewards would bring him the choicest meats from their larders. During the cold nights of the winters that followed, he always had a warm room in the station for the asking. Hundreds driving through the area would make a side trip so they could get a glimpse of the most famous and loved dog in the country.

As the years progressed out of the depression and drought, it became clear to those who knew Shep; that he was leading the life he really wanted. Although his vigil was unfulfilled, he had more friends than a dog could ever have, he ate well and as to a place to stay, his home was satisfactory. And more importantly, at least to Shep, he was in the right place to meet his friend when he finally returned home.

None of the people who visited the dog really fathomed the feeling of gradual hopelessness that developed within the dog. One can be surrounded by a multitude of friends and still feel the agony of loneliness of the loss of a loved one for that loss can not be forgotten by accepting the caresses of many who wish to replace the one who is lost. Shep knew and understood the feelings of those around him for he had experienced these feelings before when he was with his friend but those feelings were not the same. To understand the loneliness of the living, one must go within and feel the beating of the heart. A faithful dog may not understand virtue because it may not understand its significance within its own being. It is only its outward behaviour which it displays that makes us aware of the existence of its virtue.

Understanding the needs of that lonely dog was important but this understanding only became fruitful when it was sustained by the sympathetic feeling of joy and sorrow---joy because the dog was surrounded by his many friends who loved and cared for him, and sorrow, because the purpose of his vigil had become apparent to all except Shep; that his vigil would be without fulfillment.

Many of those who visited that lonely dog recognized, as the rest of us do, that we receive love and devotion from a dog as well as others of our own kind; not just in proportion to our demands, sacrifices or needs, but also in proportion to our capacity to recognize the demands, sacrifices of the needs of the dog and others. Despite the kindness shown to Shep and the opportunities to lead a comfortable life in the surroundings of friends who loved him, he was prepared to forfeit it all in order that he would not forsake his friend. None could replace his friend and yet, had he given up his vigil, he might very well have found another friend he could attach himself to. But that was not to be his choice. Shep had learned the hard way, as most of us do, that true and loyal friendship is like life; the value of it is seldom appreciated until it is lost.

The war years emerged and engulfed the world into darkness. Perhaps the darkness of gloom which falls upon us at the highest state of adversity can be dissipated by that minute flicker of light that represents hope, valour, or simply the caring of one being for another. Any light in a void is many times better than no light at all.

Shep's story, which by now was told and retold around the world, was that flicker of light so many yearned for. Many who knew of Shep's plight made their own problems easier to bear. Human nature is such; that the spectacle of another being's suffering awakens even in the best of us, a subliminal feeling of pleasure which contains along with the sincerest pity, an almost imperceptible appreciation that it is not we that are suffering the agony of that other being. For this reason, many were drawn to Shep.

Adversity not only draws people together, it also brings out that warmth in all of us, melting away the coldness we tend on occasion to show others, not unlike the early sun melting away last night's frost which has gathered on our window panes. Many of those who got to know Shep developed not only a friendship with the dog but also with others who shared their friendship with Shep.

For five and a half years, Shep kept his vigil. Not one train had passed that he hadn't personally greeted in the faint hope that at long last; he would finally meet the man who was the purpose of his vigil. Alas, the lonely vigil, along with his age---he was old when his friend passed away---had taken its toll. He was no longer agile and his hearing and eyesight had grown faint with his age.

On January 12, 1942, Shep saw the approaching train and dashed across the tracks so that he could be on the platform when it pulled in. The people smiled at each other as they watched the dog approaching them. They all knew who he was waiting for. Suddenly their faces turned to expressions of horror. Shep had stopped suddenly as train number 235 was bearing down on him. Perhaps he didn't hear the whistle or perhaps he didn't see the engine. His paws slipped on the icy cold rails. As he tried to regain his footing, the wheels of the engine crossed his body. body.

Hundreds of townspeople attended Shep's funeral. He was laid to rest on top of the small bluff overlooking the train station. There on the top of that bluff, he could wait for the trains, till the end of time. The Great Northern train employees erected a profile monument of their friend along with a concrete marker. The station personnel installed a spotlight on the station which when turned on, lit the grave site so that the passengers on the night trains can see the monument.

Often many people die believing that the Ages will pass by and no one will ever look upon their existence as being one of beauty or nobility. It is a strange anomaly of humans to ignore the admirable traits of the living and yet, later, praise the dead. Despite this strange quirk in our character, exceptions are made and Shep proved to be one of those exceptions. Those of his time may not have looked upon the dog as an object of beauty but no one missed the reality of his nobleness. The memory of Shep was not ignored by his friends nor has he been forgotten by those in the generations that followed.

His death occurred at a time when humanity was seen as being devoid of dignity and significance, seen as trivial and mean, having sunk to the depths of dreary hopelessness. Despite this, his death brought home to thousands around the world, the belief that if a dog could possess the admirable traits sought in humans, there was hope for all who recognized those traits in a dog.

I have heard it said that animals do not have a place in Heaven but I for one cannot fathom Heaven without animals who possess faithfulness and loyalty. If Shep did go to Heaven; I like to think that when he got there, he was greeted by his long-lost friend, who just like Shep, patiently waited for that eventful and beautiful meeting.