The Tragedy at the Dog Show
A blue-ribbon collie is found strangled to death in her stall following an accidental slip-noose on her chain.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A most unfortunate accident occurred early yesterday morning, when Mollie Bown, J. C. Campbell's collie bitch that won the blue ribbon and which has attracted much attention on account of her fine litter of puppies a month old, was found strangled to death. When Mr. Campbell tied her the night previous he left the chain around her neck so it was a slip noose. She wore no collar but the chain was simply hooked around the neck. Instead of catching the hook into a link he accidentally put it over the whole chain. She jumped into the next stall and the chain is supposed to have tightened so quickly that she could not cry out, and as her position was a perfectly natural one, she was not discovered until dead.
“Instead of catching the hook into a link he accidentally put it over the whole chain.”
Public spectacles like the old bench shows often drew massive crowds in late 19th-century Seattle, reflecting a culture that valued pedigree and animal exhibition in ways that feel distant from our modern, largely companion-focused relationship with pets. This story captures the precarious nature of the temporary event spaces set up for these booster-era exhibitions.
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