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Valiant, Dog of the Timberline
Valiant, Dog of the Timberline (Famous Dog Stories) by Jack O'Brien. New Grosset & Dunlap, 1935. Later Printing, Hardbound, 8.5 inches tall, 210 pages. Illustrated in black and white by Kurt Wiese. Publisher's book number 0941. By the author of the Silver Chief series, this story is about a shepherd dog who plays a part in the war between sheep and cattle ranchers in the West.
- GenresDogs
210 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1935
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 8, 2023
This book is a classic western adventure yarn of a sheepherder and his dog, ending with the sheepherder clashing with a cattle rancher. Copywrite 1935. If you like old westerns, then you would probably like this book. The dog has a fair part in the book, and although no Kleenex is needed for the dog at the end, there are some brutal bits along the way.
We go through the process of Valiant the dog growing up. He is the only male puppy in the litter. This one unlike the others, has the stamp of a true German Shepherd on him. He gained the Shepherd from his mother, Sultana, ‘through whose veins surged the purest blood of generations.’ ‘From his father, Fangs, a Mexican Shepherd, who had been killed by a wolf several weeks earlier, he had received a rare gentleness of disposition.’ As for his 3 sisters in the litter, ‘Some unaccountable throwback in the processes of nature had robbed the little females of that heritage of beauty and symmetry which distinguished their mother.’
Especially true of older books, female dogs, and mongrels, often get the shorter end of the stick. Here, the male is nurtured and trained, the rest of the litter is neglected, and their demise is hinted at in the book.
Trent decides to sell his ranch in Wyoming and move off to greener pastures in Montana. He moves his heard of sheep northward. There isn’t a lot of herding sheep with a dog as other books, as the focus is more on the human actors. Along the way -
‘Willis had walked hardly more than a hundred yards or so when a hideous roar rose above all the sounds and rooted him to the ground. A second time it occurred and was accompanied by agonizing screams. The herder stood still and then, mustering courage, he turned back in the direction of Trent and Sultana. As he did so, the rancher’s rifle cracked and spat fire. Another and then another report whipped the still air into reverberating echoes, and merging with the last was a choking, terrifying snarl.’
I will let you guess what happened. I just wanted to find an excuse to get that ‘spat fire’ part into my review.
They get to Montana and get a property of 600 acres that is allotted to a homesteader at the time. After signing the deed, ‘On his return to camp he halted on a knoll and gazed with deep satisfaction at the broad, luxuriant grasslands and thickly wooded slopes.’ He decides to name his ranch Timberline.
Once he can build a cabin, he is able to bring his son David home to him. Developing the ranch and training his son hunting and fishing in the wild takes up the third quarter of the book.
That last quarter of the book is on the conflict with the cattlemen. It gets pretty brutal here including driving some sheep off a cliff. I do however appreciate how they come to end the war. I also appreciated how the book gave enough information on why cattlemen don’t like sheep.
‘There were, to be sure, some grounds for the ranchers’ bitterness toward sheep. It was known that sheep cold be destructive to grass. Their small, sharp hoofs knifed deep into the sod, turning it up and cutting it so thoroughly that years were necessary for a new growth of grass to appear. In grazing also it could be held that they were harmful to the ranges because of their method of cropping down close to the roots and at times even below them. A sheep band allowed to graze too long on one range could utterly destroy it, reduce it to barren uselessness as quickly and completely as could a cloud of locusts swarm down and destroy a tract of grain. Bed grounds also were harmful to the pastures. Herders brought their sheep together at night to protect them from the ravages of roving wolves, coyotes, and bears, and should the band be permitted to occupy the same bed grounds for too long a period, the growth was soon worn off, exposing the bare earth, hopeless for future grass.’
Jack O’Brien puts together some good stories, like Valiant, but they are not at the same level as those by Albert Payson Terhune. Terhune also did at least one story of sheepherder versus a cattle rancher as well. I give this book 4 stars in comparison with Terhune, but as I said, it is still a well put together story that I enjoyed well enough. It also checks off as #19 of the 27 books I have identified in the Grosset and Dunlap's 'Famous Dog stories' books, making this #19 of the 27 books I have identified in the 'Famous'.
For anyone else interested in seeing how many of the P&D's Famous Dogs Stories they have read, here is the list I have compiled:
Baree, Son of Kazan
Bat, The Story of a Bull Terrier
Beautiful Joe
Big Red
Bob, Son of Battle
Boru, The Story of an Irish Wolfhound
Derry, Airdate of the Frontier
Derry's Partner
Dumb-Bell and others
Irish Red
Juneau, the Sleigh Dog
Kazan, the Wolf Dog
Lassie Come-Home
Outlaw Red
Rusty, A Cocker Spaniel
Silver Chief to the Rescue
Silver Chief, Dog of the North
Silver Chief's Big Game Trail
Silver Chief's Revenge
Snow Dog
Spike of Swift River
The Call of the Wild
The Return of Silver Chief
True Stories of Heroic Dogs
Valiant, Dog of the Timberline
White Fang
Wild Dog of Edmonton
I would be interested in hearing how many of those books others have read. (and I understand, you may not have read them in a 'Famous Dog Stories' edition. I haven't either and at this time only own about 17 of those versions).
We go through the process of Valiant the dog growing up. He is the only male puppy in the litter. This one unlike the others, has the stamp of a true German Shepherd on him. He gained the Shepherd from his mother, Sultana, ‘through whose veins surged the purest blood of generations.’ ‘From his father, Fangs, a Mexican Shepherd, who had been killed by a wolf several weeks earlier, he had received a rare gentleness of disposition.’ As for his 3 sisters in the litter, ‘Some unaccountable throwback in the processes of nature had robbed the little females of that heritage of beauty and symmetry which distinguished their mother.’
Especially true of older books, female dogs, and mongrels, often get the shorter end of the stick. Here, the male is nurtured and trained, the rest of the litter is neglected, and their demise is hinted at in the book.
Trent decides to sell his ranch in Wyoming and move off to greener pastures in Montana. He moves his heard of sheep northward. There isn’t a lot of herding sheep with a dog as other books, as the focus is more on the human actors. Along the way -
‘Willis had walked hardly more than a hundred yards or so when a hideous roar rose above all the sounds and rooted him to the ground. A second time it occurred and was accompanied by agonizing screams. The herder stood still and then, mustering courage, he turned back in the direction of Trent and Sultana. As he did so, the rancher’s rifle cracked and spat fire. Another and then another report whipped the still air into reverberating echoes, and merging with the last was a choking, terrifying snarl.’
I will let you guess what happened. I just wanted to find an excuse to get that ‘spat fire’ part into my review.
They get to Montana and get a property of 600 acres that is allotted to a homesteader at the time. After signing the deed, ‘On his return to camp he halted on a knoll and gazed with deep satisfaction at the broad, luxuriant grasslands and thickly wooded slopes.’ He decides to name his ranch Timberline.
Once he can build a cabin, he is able to bring his son David home to him. Developing the ranch and training his son hunting and fishing in the wild takes up the third quarter of the book.
That last quarter of the book is on the conflict with the cattlemen. It gets pretty brutal here including driving some sheep off a cliff. I do however appreciate how they come to end the war. I also appreciated how the book gave enough information on why cattlemen don’t like sheep.
‘There were, to be sure, some grounds for the ranchers’ bitterness toward sheep. It was known that sheep cold be destructive to grass. Their small, sharp hoofs knifed deep into the sod, turning it up and cutting it so thoroughly that years were necessary for a new growth of grass to appear. In grazing also it could be held that they were harmful to the ranges because of their method of cropping down close to the roots and at times even below them. A sheep band allowed to graze too long on one range could utterly destroy it, reduce it to barren uselessness as quickly and completely as could a cloud of locusts swarm down and destroy a tract of grain. Bed grounds also were harmful to the pastures. Herders brought their sheep together at night to protect them from the ravages of roving wolves, coyotes, and bears, and should the band be permitted to occupy the same bed grounds for too long a period, the growth was soon worn off, exposing the bare earth, hopeless for future grass.’
Jack O’Brien puts together some good stories, like Valiant, but they are not at the same level as those by Albert Payson Terhune. Terhune also did at least one story of sheepherder versus a cattle rancher as well. I give this book 4 stars in comparison with Terhune, but as I said, it is still a well put together story that I enjoyed well enough. It also checks off as #19 of the 27 books I have identified in the Grosset and Dunlap's 'Famous Dog stories' books, making this #19 of the 27 books I have identified in the 'Famous'.
For anyone else interested in seeing how many of the P&D's Famous Dogs Stories they have read, here is the list I have compiled:
Baree, Son of Kazan
Bat, The Story of a Bull Terrier
Beautiful Joe
Big Red
Bob, Son of Battle
Boru, The Story of an Irish Wolfhound
Derry, Airdate of the Frontier
Derry's Partner
Dumb-Bell and others
Irish Red
Juneau, the Sleigh Dog
Kazan, the Wolf Dog
Lassie Come-Home
Outlaw Red
Rusty, A Cocker Spaniel
Silver Chief to the Rescue
Silver Chief, Dog of the North
Silver Chief's Big Game Trail
Silver Chief's Revenge
Snow Dog
Spike of Swift River
The Call of the Wild
The Return of Silver Chief
True Stories of Heroic Dogs
Valiant, Dog of the Timberline
White Fang
Wild Dog of Edmonton
I would be interested in hearing how many of those books others have read. (and I understand, you may not have read them in a 'Famous Dog Stories' edition. I haven't either and at this time only own about 17 of those versions).
September 2, 2022
This book was written in the 1930’s. It makes me wonder why we don’t have this kind of dog book anymore? It’s like Old Yeller or Big Red — a noble dog interacting with human drama. It felt like revisiting my childhood and the books I grew up with that made me fall in love with dogs to begin with. I enjoyed every second of it but especially the “old book” smell.
November 5, 2016
Went through a bit of a Jack O'Brien stage when I was in middle school desperate for anything to read especially if it featured a canine protagonist (it followed right after my horse phase where I devoured all things Black Beauty and the Black Stallion) to this day I still remember reading this books and loving them
September 25, 2018
This is kind of your generic western with a dog story, and there's really nothing terribly remarkable about except that it -rather unusually- sees the sheepmen as the good guys and the cattle ranchers as the bad guys (in my experience with westerns it's typically the other way 'round). Otherwise, I've definitely seen this plot before.
Curiously, the book is almost like two separate books. It begins in the way of a true dog book, with the perspective of the dog. As was customary for most animal books of the period, it begins with the dog's birth, his growth, and his general education, mostly from the perspective of Valiant himself. This is to be expected from both the book's title and the author's foreward where he expresses a fondness for sheepdogs, and the intent that Valiant embody the best traits of any such dog, of any breed.
Midway through, something weird happens. Suddenly the perspective is primarily that of the sheepman, Trent. He tells some stories to his unresponsive herder, and it is revealed that he has a son, David, who shortly enters the story. After a brief foray into boy and his dog story territory, the book settles firmly into what I like to call the "rival dojo scenario." Suddenly cattlemen enter the scene, and a range war is set up, to take up most of the rest of the book.
Partway through the second to last chapter, we resume our former narrative style, falling into the perspective of the dog once more, where we stay for the most part until the conclusion.
I have no means of determining whether or not this is true, but it feels almost like the author sent in his story, was told it was too short, and then chose to make the humans main characters, letting them story tell for numerous pages, and adding in the range war to pad out the original story, for they truly feel as if they were worked in. Another theory I have is that the author wrote a short story, and then later filled in the middle to make it a full novel.
All of this not to say that the book is bad, it's fair (but not in any way outstanding), if historically inaccurate in featuring a German Shepherd as its main protagonist during a period such a dog was unlikely to be seen in the US, or possibly before the breed even solidly existed (a specific year is not stated, but probably during the Sheep and Cattle Wars is a safe bet). Possibly other historical inaccuracies can be found, but dogs are what I know, and so that is what I question. But a little historical inaccuracy is almost to be expected in such a book, and I give it a pass on that. It does also contain a few facts I was unaware of, but looked up and was able to confirm, so I learned a few things as well (though much of it is decidedly fiction). For instance, he makes specific mention of Valiant's small, pointed ears. Picking up my book on the German Shepherd and its history originally published in the sixties, I was surprised to find that the description was not as inaccurate as I had assumed for the American-bred dogs at the time the book was written. While I might not say their ears were small, they were smallish, and much more sharply pointed than even the working line German Shepherds of today. But I digress.
In all, it's predictable, but entertaining if it's your kind of book, though finding a copy of it could prove challenging as there were not that many editions of it, but it sure does look pretty on a shelf (curiously, though all online photos I've seen of it show a red book, mine is unambiguously green), and I feel it's definitely not worth a high dollar amount.
As a child I would have been horribly annoyed by the portions of the book in which Valiant plays little part, for it was ever and always my opinion that any animal story should at all times be chiefly about the animal and ideally from that animal's perspective. I'm somewhat more forgiving of that these days, and tolerated the human devoted sections most admirably.
Curiously, the book is almost like two separate books. It begins in the way of a true dog book, with the perspective of the dog. As was customary for most animal books of the period, it begins with the dog's birth, his growth, and his general education, mostly from the perspective of Valiant himself. This is to be expected from both the book's title and the author's foreward where he expresses a fondness for sheepdogs, and the intent that Valiant embody the best traits of any such dog, of any breed.
Midway through, something weird happens. Suddenly the perspective is primarily that of the sheepman, Trent. He tells some stories to his unresponsive herder, and it is revealed that he has a son, David, who shortly enters the story. After a brief foray into boy and his dog story territory, the book settles firmly into what I like to call the "rival dojo scenario." Suddenly cattlemen enter the scene, and a range war is set up, to take up most of the rest of the book.
Partway through the second to last chapter, we resume our former narrative style, falling into the perspective of the dog once more, where we stay for the most part until the conclusion.
I have no means of determining whether or not this is true, but it feels almost like the author sent in his story, was told it was too short, and then chose to make the humans main characters, letting them story tell for numerous pages, and adding in the range war to pad out the original story, for they truly feel as if they were worked in. Another theory I have is that the author wrote a short story, and then later filled in the middle to make it a full novel.
All of this not to say that the book is bad, it's fair (but not in any way outstanding), if historically inaccurate in featuring a German Shepherd as its main protagonist during a period such a dog was unlikely to be seen in the US, or possibly before the breed even solidly existed (a specific year is not stated, but probably during the Sheep and Cattle Wars is a safe bet). Possibly other historical inaccuracies can be found, but dogs are what I know, and so that is what I question. But a little historical inaccuracy is almost to be expected in such a book, and I give it a pass on that. It does also contain a few facts I was unaware of, but looked up and was able to confirm, so I learned a few things as well (though much of it is decidedly fiction). For instance, he makes specific mention of Valiant's small, pointed ears. Picking up my book on the German Shepherd and its history originally published in the sixties, I was surprised to find that the description was not as inaccurate as I had assumed for the American-bred dogs at the time the book was written. While I might not say their ears were small, they were smallish, and much more sharply pointed than even the working line German Shepherds of today. But I digress.
In all, it's predictable, but entertaining if it's your kind of book, though finding a copy of it could prove challenging as there were not that many editions of it, but it sure does look pretty on a shelf (curiously, though all online photos I've seen of it show a red book, mine is unambiguously green), and I feel it's definitely not worth a high dollar amount.
As a child I would have been horribly annoyed by the portions of the book in which Valiant plays little part, for it was ever and always my opinion that any animal story should at all times be chiefly about the animal and ideally from that animal's perspective. I'm somewhat more forgiving of that these days, and tolerated the human devoted sections most admirably.
June 23, 2020
This is probably my least favorite of all Jack O’Brien’s dog books that I have read. I’m not sure why. It was still a good story, about an interesting, though rather difficult, time between cattlemen and sheepherders. Valiant lived up to his name and I really liked David. There was one character I never liked and my suspicious proved true.
There is some mention of blood and injuries, some animal deaths in rather shocking and sad ways, but nothing graphic. And I liked the ending.
This is not a Christian book and there is no mention of prayer, God, or the Bible. But it is clean.
There is some mention of blood and injuries, some animal deaths in rather shocking and sad ways, but nothing graphic. And I liked the ending.
This is not a Christian book and there is no mention of prayer, God, or the Bible. But it is clean.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews