Years ago, we knew a wonderful Old English Sheepdog named, “Thurber.”  It turns out that “Thurber” just may be one of the most popular dog names ever. But where did it come from?

We think we can thank James Thurber for that. Thurber was an American writer, author, playwright, cartoonist, journalist, and, in our opinion, all around wit.  He was usually associated with the New Yorker Magazine, but he wrote The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and stood alone in his own right – and Thurber loved dogs. He wrote dogs, drew dogs, and lived dogs, and the reason, it was postulated, wasn’t just that Thurber was an enthusiastic dog owner. He saw dogs as the canine embodiment of the American man. In the Big New Yorker of American Dogs, it was suggested that the dog wasn’t man’s best friend as much as man’s sole ally in the struggle with “man’s strangest necessity: Woman.”

It was a different time.