Earlier today, we found a relevant comment, and it reminded us that quite possibly, the most difficult mind to change belongs to a dog person. But we’ll get to that in a moment. For now, a bit of trivia. Did you know that the first talking pet to appear in American comics was “Tige,” Buster Brown’s dog?

Buster Brown was a comic-strip character created in 1902 by cartoonist and pioneer of the modern comic strip, Richard F. Outcault.  Some say Outcault borrowed the character’s first name from a popular vaudevillian performer of the time, Buster Keaton, but most concur that the “Buster Brown” name also described the popular suit worn by young boys, the Buster Brown suit.

By 1906, Richard Outcault had become the world’s highest paid artist. He sold Buster Brown licenses to some 200 companies who wanted to use Buster Brown characters to advertise their products, but older readers among us will always associate Buster Brown with shoes. Why? In part, because one of the companies that bought a license was the Brown Shoe Company which really took off when a sales executive at Brown, John A. Bush, got the rights to use the Buster Brown character.  The shoes became instant hits, the brand growing stronger with each decade. Parents liked the affordable and comfortable shoes, and kids adored Buster and his dog…….and here we pivot back to Tige.

Tige will always have a significant place in comic history as the first talking pet to appear in American comics. Though the dog’s speech was understood only by Buster, the innovation became a popular vehicle not only in other comic strips, but paved the way for talking animals in, say, Disney classics.

As you can see from the image at the very top, Tige was clearly a bully breed, and herein lies the comment left for us on a post written in 2015 identifying Tige as an American Pit Bull Terrier.

“Oh no,” wrote the chap leaving the comment. “Tige was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier.” He added additional history about the Staffie, none with which we could disagree, but the breed was a sticking point. Always ready to review something written nearly ten years ago, we reinvestigated and have come to a conclusion.

Tige was an American Pit Bull Terrier.

We found various sources confirming this, including the Michigan Humane Society, but the final authority was the Buster Brown Shoe Company itself which identified Tige as an American Pit Bull Terrier, a breed recognized by the United Kennel Club in 1898. The recognition is significant because the UKC was the first registry to officially acknowledge the breed, no doubt because the founder of the UKC, C. Z. Bennett, assigned UKC registration number 1 to his own American Pit Bull Terrier, “Bennett’s Ring.”

We thought it was a topic worth revisiting, and now you know!