The Custers and Their Dogs is the first book to seriously explore the little known history of General George Armstrong and Libbie Custer as wholehearted dog lovers. At the time of Custer’s death at Little Bighorn, they owned a rollicking pack of forty hunting hounds-including Scottish Deerhounds, Russian Wolfhounds, Greyhounds, and Foxhounds.
Told engagingly through a dog owner’s lens, this biography of the Custers’ life covers their first dogs in the Civil War and Texas, hunting on the Kansas and Dakota frontiers, entertaining tourist buffalo hunters such as a Russian Archduke, English aristocracy, and The Great Showman, P. T. Barnum (all whom presented the general with hounds), Custer’s attack on the Washita village (when he was accused of strangling his own dogs), and the 7th Cavalry’s march to Little Bighorn with an analysis of the many rumors about a Last Stand dog. Duggan also reveals how the Custers’ pack was re-homed after Armstrong’s death in the first national dog rescue effort-and the strange fate of Libbie’s favorite staghound. Included is an appendix discussing depictions of General Custer’s dogs in art, literature, and film.