Your article (The incredible story of Merlin the spaniel shows how little humans know about dogs, 15 January) reminds me about a report I found in Berrow’s Worcester Journal of 10 January 1874.
Forty years earlier, a young farmer, Richard Guilding, had joined a group from the village of Quedgeley, near Gloucester, seeking their fortune in America.
Guilding took with him his dog, a wire-haired fox terrier bitch. They first travelled 27 miles to Bristol, sailed to New York, then went a further 345 miles by water and rail to their destination, Syracuse, in New York state. In the hurry of disembarking there, the dog was missed and all trace of her was lost.
Some time after arriving, one of the group wrote to Guilding’s father and mentioned the loss of the dog; at the moment the letter arrived in Quedgeley, the animal was lying in front of the kitchen fire in the house from which she had been taken 10 months earlier.
Malcolm Fare
Hanley Swan, Worcestershire
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