After fifteen years of service to God and Country, Colour Sergeant Watchman IV was laid to rest with full military honors.The strapping officer’s coffin was carried by four uniformed officers through his hometown of Burton in a solemn procession. Standard bearers wearing medals that glinted in the sun lined the route, and a bugler performed the Last Post during a moving funeral ceremony attended by dignitaries and the public.

A sad occasion, but not a remarkable story except that Colour Sergeant Watchman IV was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. The Staffordshire Regiment (now the 3rd Battalion the Mercian Regiment – Staffords) – and Staffordshire Regimental Association’s tradition of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier serving as regimental mascot dates back to 1882,  but this is not our story. Our story comes after regimental mascots have done their time. What happens when they die?

While Colour Sergeant Watchman IV – “Stormy” – was laid to rest in his home town, at Edinburgh Castle such dogs have been buried in Dog Cemetery, a burial place for regimental mascots and commanding officers’ dogs since Queen Victoria’s time. Within the walls of the castle (one of only two in Scotland for these animals), the small garden is out of reach of visitors and can only be seen from above.

Approximately two dozen gravestones are visible, many of them so weathered that the inscriptions are no longer legible. Earliest mascots included,  “Jess,” the band pet of the Black Watch 42^nd Royal Highlanders was laid to rest here in 1881, and “Dobbler,” who travelled with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders to such exotic locations as China, Sri Lanka and South Africa, came in 1893.

You can read a full account of Colour Sergeant Watchman IV’s funeral ceremony, along with photographs, here.

Dog cemetery photos found on Pinterest