Dogs are my favorite non-human animals. Indeed, there are some dogs I like better than some human animals I know. They are, in general, more dependable and, for the most part, a lot more entertaining. Through the years, I’ve enjoyed collecting information and lore about individual dogs and breeds that have appeared here in Western North Carolina.

My wife, Elizabeth, and I are partial to German shorthaired pointers, having had them as pets-and virtual family members-for the last 25 years. Our current shorthairs are named Zeke (for Ezekiel) and Uly (for Ulysses, the Greek wanderer, not the Yankee general). They accompany us on walks each evening and travel with us just about everywhere we go. They are our friends.

Plott hounds are, of course, the most famous breed of dog ever produced in WNC and one of the oldest breeds established in North America. Of disputed original stock, the original Plott strain was brought to North America in the mid-1700s by Johannes Plott, formerly a gamekeeper in Germany. The Plott dogs have been described as “fierce, iron-willed dogs that would track, chase, and fight black bear, mountain lions, and wolves with unequaled ability.” Plott family descendents, who had settled in Plott Valley just west of present Waynesville by 1800, worked at improving the strain from generation to generation.

In My Mountains, My People (1957), John Parris reprinted one of his columns entitled “Never Cuss a Man’s Houn’ Dog,” which is set “somewhere in the Blue Ridge.” It opens with Big Sam and Old Billy-B, “two old cronies” about to come to blows over negative comments made by Big Sam about Trim, Old Billy-B’s coon dog.

Trim was a fabulous hunting dog, described by its owner as “a small red hound one-eighth feist, prettiest hound-dog you ever saw. And the smartest. Now some folks brag about their dogs till they’re plumb out of breath. Why, they’ll ‘tribute powers and wisdom to their dog that no dog has. Of course, it’s a man’s privilege to brag when he’s got a good hound-dog ... Be that as it may, a’body didn’t need to let his tongue run loose about Trim. She done her own braggin’. Done it like a good hound should. You never saw her so I’ll have to tell you. She had 256 coons to her credit when she died .... She had the prettiest-soundin’ voice you ever heard. Somehow when you heard her it made you think of heaven. It was that kind of pretty.”

Old Billy-B had raised Trim from a pup and loved her. So, when Big Sam slandered Trim, accusing her of “runnin’ one of his dogs out of a race,” there was a standoff around their campfire — Big Sam with his knife and Old Billy-B with his rifle — and the two men came close to killing one another before making up at the last moment.

“But,” as the story rightly concludes, “you never can tell what a man’ll do when somebody berates his hound-dog.”

I can’t remember where I first read or heard the story of Bonas, the famous 19th century Jackson County hunting dog. The story is a sad story, but, nevertheless, it’s one my favorite dog stories. There’s a parable of sorts in Bonas’ ultimate demise.

(The Tuckasegee Gorge — located in the remote Little Canada section of Jackson County — is widely recognized as one of the roughest wilderness areas in the eastern United States. The spectacular Bonas Defeat cliff towers almost 400 feet above the gorge floor.

What does the name signify? According to local legend, it’s named for a renowned hunting dog named Bonas, or Old Bonas. Some say he was known familiarly as Ole Boney. Bonas’ specialty was chasing deer off of this particular cliff into the Tuckasgee Gorge, whereupon his owner (some say his name was Cook) would then collect the carcass far below.

One fine day, Bonas got too involved in his work, got too excited, stopped paying attention to where he was going, and pursued his quarry right off the cliff. Some say the deer jumped aside at the last moment, saving its own self, and thereby tricking Bonas to his ultimate defeat.

In a very interesting article titled “Gi-li’ — The Dog in Cherokee Thought” that appeared in the Journal of Cherokee Studies (vol. 23), Carrie A. McLachlan noted: “In the Cherokee belief system dogs are important to humans in life and in death. They provide aid in matters of love, in healing, as hunters, and as guardians of the sick and dead. They are mediators relaying important messages to humans; they sacrifice themselves that people might live; they act as guardians of the celestial realm, and judge the souls of the dead.”

My favorite Cherokee dog story is about the dog that “miraculously spoke” to his owner, “informing him that, after twelve days, a rain would commence, which would soon drown the world.” The version of this story reproduced as a sidebar with this column appeared in James Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokees (1900). Other versions cited by McLachlan indicate that the dog learned of the impending flood by listening to the river, that there were huge alligators swimming in the flood that devoured the dog, and that many of the man’s companions survived the flood on a hill rather than being “reduced to piles of bones.”

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com.