From ReelDogs
I watched this film many, many times when I was a child. I think it had some influence on my love for frontier stories and our regional dog breeds. I’ve read the novel on which the film is based. (I’ll warn you that Miley Cyrus is the music played on the youtube video, in case you haven’t already clicked it).
The dog that plays Old Yeller in the film was a Labrador cross named Spike.
In the novel, the dog was a cur of some sort.
If this film is ever remade, I hope they use a cur and not a retriever.
Labs didn’t exist in the 1870’s, at least as we know them now.
And the first real yellow Lab didn’t exist until 1899.
That dog was Ben of Hyde.
This is an actual photo of Ben of Hyde retrieving trout, just like the dog in the dog in film caught fish.
This is a photo that shows Ben’s rather feathered tail, and I’m beginning to wonder if he might have had a Tweedmouth strain of wavy-coat in his background.
I hear lots of folks claim that Ole Yeller was a black mouth cur, and I’ve always thought that made an awful lot of sense- they’re a wonderful, versatile breed, albeit not really one that would find city life particularly enjoyable. (Lack of mud, things to chase, catch, and eat.)
I’ve always heard that he was a Mountain Cur, but I’ve always imagined Yeller as a very large dog. Mountain curs are also very versatile, and they were well-known on the frontier. However, the black-mouthed cur is kind of native to the same regions as Yeller.
The Mountain Curs I’ve known have been more ‘bully’ and remind me more of Catahoulas than the BMCs.
“My” first dog was a BMC puppy that I picked out of a litter that my grandfather’s ranch foreman bred. Taught him to sit, shake, walk on a leash, and fetch in one weekend before my parents arrived on Sunday to pick me up from my grandparents and decreed that no, we were NOT having a dog in the city, especially not a big active cur who would surely shed tons and track mud in the house. I was heartbroken for several weeks, but I still love the breed.
(“My” puppy’s descendents are still around down around Cameron, and I always wonder when I see a blackmouthed cur in the back of a pickup around there if he or she is related to the dog that I would have had.)
There are lots of Mountain Curs in West Virginia. I really hope that one day they become the official state dog, because they were developed in the Ohio Valley and its drainage.