John Gray and Bobby

John Gray as Constable No 90, was obliged to have a watch dog. He was given a dog when he first joined the Police  Force, but no one knows what breed it was or what happened to it.

 

Obliged to keep to the regulations he was ordered to find another watch dog. He chose a Skye terrier, about 6 months old. What was the young puppy to be called?  There was no doubt, he was called ‘Bobby’  after all he was a police dog!

 

Bobby now became part of John Gray’s life. His  shaggy hair from his long body hung over his eyes, with a stump of a tail that wagged  continually.  He was tenacious in character, distrustful of strangers but devoted to family and friends, he was courageous but not aggressive. No other sort of dog has more gritty tenacity, cockiness or sparkle than a Skye terrier. With one particular noted quality – loyalty, aptly depicted in the records of  Bobby’s life,  a dog who guarded his master’s grave for fourteen years, till his own death in 1872.

 

John Gray met many friends at the general weekly cattle market. He was well respected  as a policeman,  Bobby kept close to his master’s heels at these markets, because of the often unruly cattle.

 

Often John Gray and Bobby would take a leisurely walk to Greyfriars Place, to the Coffee House owned by Mr William Ramsey. They had a favourite seat and watched Mrs Ramsey coming in and out of the back room where she did the cooking.

 

Night duty at the Cattle market was not very pleasant.

 

The duty policeman and his dog, in all kinds of weather, had to keep on the move around the pens to prevent theft.

 

How John Gray and Bobby would have looked on duty