Books with title Buff: A Collie and Other Dog Stories

Albert Payson Terhune (December 21, 1872 – February 18, 1942) was an American author, dog breeder, and journalist. He was popular for his novels relating the adventures of his beloved collies and as a breeder of collies at his Sunnybank Kennels, the lines of which still exist in today's Rough Collies.Albert Payson Terhune was born in New Jersey to Mary Virginia Hawes and the Reverend Edward Payson Terhune. His mother, Mary Virginia Hawes, was a writer of household management books and pre-Civil War novels under the name Marion Harland. Terhune had four sisters and one brother, though only two of his sisters lived to be adults: Christine Terhune Herrick (1859–1944); and Virginia Terhune Van De Water (1865–1945).Sunnybank (41.0012°N 74.2755°W) was originally the family's summer home, with Terhune making it his permanent residence in 1912. He was educated at Columbia University where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1893. From 1894 to 1916, he worked as a reporter for The Evening World.He boxed exhibition matches with James J. Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons and James J. Jeffries.His Sunnybank Kennels where he bred and raised rough collies were "the most famed collie kennels in the U.S."Albert Payson Terhune first published short stories about his collie Lad, titled Lad Stories, in various general-interest magazines, including Red Book, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, Hartford Courant, and the Atlantic Monthly. The first of his novels about his dogs, Lad: A Dog, collected a dozen stories of his collie Lad in novel form. Lad was followed by over 30 additional dog-focused novels, including two additional books about Lad. Published in 1919, the novel was a best seller in both the adult and young adult markets and has been reprinted over 80 times. It was adapted into a feature film in 1962. A man of his time, Terhune is now often criticized for his starkly racist depictions of the minorities, hill people and so-called "half-breeds" that peopled parts of northern New Jersey less idealized than Sunnybank.(Wikipedia)

Albert Payson Terhune (1872 – 1942) was an American author, dog breeder, and journalist. The public knows him best for his novels relating the adventures of his beloved collies and as a breeder of collies at his Sunnybank Kennels, the lines of which still exist in today's Rough Collies. This volume collects 8 classic dog-stories, including "Buff: A Collie," "Something," "Chums," "Human-Interest Stuff," "One Minute Longer," "The Foul Fancier," "The Grudge," and "The Sunnybank Collies."

Buff: A Collie and other dog-stories, by Albert Payson Terhune.CHAPTER ONE: THE FIGHTING STRAINSHE was a mixture of the unmixable. Not one expert in eighty could have guessed at her breed or breeds.Her coat was like a chow’s, except that it was black and white and tan—as is no chow’s between here and the Chinese Wall. Her deep chest was as wide as a bulldog’s; her queer little eyes slanted like a collie’s; her foreface was like a Great Dane’s, with its barrel muzzle and dewlaps. She was as big as a mastiff.She was Nina, and she belonged to a well-to-do farmer named Shawe, a man who went in for registered cattle, and, as a side line, for prize collies.To clear up, in a handful of words, the mystery of Nina’s breeding, her dam was Shawe’s long-pedigreed and registered and prize-winning tricolour collie, Shawemere Queen. Her sire was Upstreet Butcherboy, the fiercest and gamest and strongest and most murderous pit-terrier ever loosed upon a doomed opponent.Shawe had decided not to breed Shawemere Queen that season. Shawemere Queen had decided differently. Wherefore, she had broken from her enclosure by the simple method of gnawing for three hours at the rotting wood that held a rusty lock-staple.This had chanced to befall on a night when Tug McManus had deputed the evening exercising of Upstreet Butcherboy to a new handy-man. The handy-man did not know Butcherboy’s odd trick of going slack on the chain for a moment and then flinging himself forward with all his surpassing speed and still more surpassing strength.As a result, the man came back to McManus’s alone, noisily nursing three chain-torn fingers. Butcherboy trotted home to his kennel at dawn, stolidly taking the whaling which McManus saw fit to administer.When Shawemere Queen’s six bullet-headed pups came into the world, sixty-three days later, there was loud and lurid blasphemy, at her master’s kennels. Shawe, as soon as he could speak with any degree of coherence, bade his kennelman drown five of the pups at once, and to give like treatment to the sixth as soon as its mother should have no further need of the youngster.At random the kennelman scooped up five-sixths of the litter and strolled off to the horse-pond.CONTENTS. FOREWORDI. BUFF: A COLLIE CHAPTER ONE: THE FIGHTING STRAINCHAPTER TWO: “THE HUNT IS UP!”CHAPTER THREE: MASTERLESS! 80 CHAPTER FOUR: THE END OF THE TRAILII. “SOMETHING”III. CHUMSIV. HUMAN-INTEREST STUFFV. “ONE MINUTE LONGER”VI. THE FOUL FANCIERVII. THE GRUDGEVIII. THE SUNNYBANK COLLIESFOREWORDA swirl of gold-and-white and gray and black,—Rackety, vibrant, glad with life’s hot zest,—Sunnybank collies, gaily surging pack,—These are my chums; the chums that love me best.Not chums alone, but courtiers, zealots, too,—Clean-white of soul, too wise for fraud or sham;Yet senseless in their worship ever new.These are the friendly folk whose god I am.A blatant, foolish, stumbling, purblind god,—A pinchbeck idol, clogged with feet of clay!Yet, eager at my lightest word or nod,They crave but leave to follow and obey.We humans are so slow to understand!Swift in our wrath, deaf to the justice-plea,Meting out punishment with lavish hand!What, but a dog, would serve such gods as we?Heaven gave them souls, I’m sure; but dulled the brain,Lest they should sadden at so brief a spanOf heedless, honest life as they sustain;Or doubt the godhead of their master, Man.Today a pup; to-morrow at life’s prime;Then old and fragile;—dead at fourteen years.At best a meagre little inch of time.Oblivion then, sans mourners, memories, tears!Service that asks no price; forgiveness freeFor injury or for injustice hard.Stanch friendship, wanting neither thanks nor feeSave privilege to worship and to guard:—That is their creed. They know no shrewder wayTo travel through their hour of lifetime here.Would Man but deign to serve his God as they,Millennium must dawn within the

“Buff: A Collie And Other Dog Stories” is a collection of short stories by Albert Payson Terhune. These charming canine tales are highly recommended for dog lovers and all who have read and enjoyed other works by this author. Albert Payson Terhune (1872 – 1942) was an American novelist most famous for his novel “Lad: A Dog”, which follows the adventures and travails of a dog called Lad. Following the success of this novel, Terhune went on to produce over thirty other novels based around the lives of dogs. Other notable works by this author include: Dr. Dale: A Story Without A Moral” (1900), “The New Mayor” (1907), and “Caleb Conover, Railroader” (1907). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

NOW this is the story of the masterless wanderings of Buff.Long and unavailingly did Buff follow the track of the car which had borne away the man who was his god. Dizzy from his wound, faint from loss of blood, heart-broken and frantic at the vanishing of his master, the collie sped in pursuit. The scent was fresh in his nostrils—the scent of the kidnapped man and of his abductors, and the familiar odour of Trent’s car.Mile after mile galloped Buff through the summer night; trusting wholly to his sense of smell. With the peculiar mile-eating canter of his wolf-ancestors, he stuck to the trail, even when the car’s track ceased to furrow the dusty country road and passed clean through a busy little city.Through the city’s myriad odours and distractions, Buff stuck to the scent of his master’s car. Other cars—hundreds of them—had laced the trail. The asphalt’s smell of gasoline and grease was sickeningly acute in the dog’s nostrils, confusing and sometimes all but blotting out the scent he was following. Yet never quite did Buff lose the track.Under the lamps of motor-trucks and trolley cars he flashed, swerving barely far enough out of their way to save himself from death; then ever picking up the scent again.Once a troop of small boys gave chase, realising the chances of reward that lay in the capture of so fine a dog. But Buff, with that odd and choppy wolf-stride of his, soon out-distanced them. And they threw stones, futilely, in the wake of the flying tawny shape.Again, a Great Dane whirled out of a dooryard and pursued the passing collie. Buff was aware of the larger dog’s presence only when a spring and a snarl warned him to wheel, in bare time to avoid the full shock of the Dane’s charge.Buff had no time for fighting. Paying no further heed to the attacking giant, he swerved from the assault, caught the trail again, and increased his pace. But the Great Dane would not have it so. His instincts of a bully were aroused by the meek flight of this stranger dog from his onset. And he pursued at top speed.A motor-bus, whirring out from a side street, checked Buff’s flight for an instant, by barring the way. Before he could get into his stride again, the Dane had hurled himself upon the fugitive, bearing him to the ground, in the slime and mud of the greasy street.By the time Buff’s tawny back smote the asphalt, he was master of the situation. Furious at this abominable delay he reverted to type—or to two types.It was his wolf-ancestry that lent him the wit and the nimbleness to spin to his feet, under the big assailant’s lunging body, and to find by instinct the hind leg tendon of the lumbering brute. All this, in one lightning swirl, and before the Dane could slacken his own pace.BUFF, A Collie and other dog-stories, THE FIGHTING STRAIN, ONE MINUTE LONGER, THE FOUL FANCIER, THE GRUDGE, THE SUNNYBANK COLLIES

Terhune's classic book of adventure stories involving heroic dogs and their masters is presented anew to the modern reader. Originally published in 1922, this collection of short fiction featuring canines channels Albert Payson Terhune's profound love for man's best friend. After beginning this compilation with a poetic forward, we hear of the adventures of various collie dogs, whose intelligence and prowess in tracking and herding secured their lasting popularity in rural America, and a place as prominent characters in fiction. The stories are universally imbued by the author's love and experience for breeding and raising hounds, particularly the rough collie breed. Unusually for popular fiction, one may encounter occasional pointers and knowledge about breeding dogs in the descriptions Terhune uses in his narratives. Albert Terhune was, from the 1900s to the 1930s, a regular contributor to popular magazines and journals.

If you are numbered among those fortunates whose homecoming is met with the joyous bark of absolute devotion, you will understand and appreciate this man's dog. The strange adventures which befell Buff and Michael Trent needed all the courage and strong faith to bring them safely through. And Buff was no whit behind his master, for the finest of two breeds centered in him, the keenness and beauty of the blue-blooded collie and from far back, the fighting heart of an indomitable pit bull.