Owney was a stray dog who wandered into the Albany, New York, post office in 1888. The clerks let him stay the night, and he fell asleep on a pile of empty mailbags. Owney was attracted to the texture or scent of the mailbags and began to follow them, first onto mail wagons and then onto mail trains. Owney began to ride with the bags on Railway Post Office (RPO) train cars across the state . . . and then the country! The RPO clerks adopted Owney as their unofficial mascot, marking his travels by placing medals and tags from his stops on his collar.
Each time Owney returned home to Albany, the clerks saved the tags. Owney received so many tags on his trips that their weight around his neck began to weigh the poor dog down. After Postmaster General John Wanamaker heard of this problem, he had a harness made for the dog that could be used to display the tags more evenly over Owney’s body while he traveled.
In 1895 the Tacoma, Washington, postmaster sent Owney on a trip around the world as part of an advertising campaign for the city. The dog, accompanied by a U.S. postal clerk, traveled on steamships and trains from Tacoma through Asia, the Middle East, and the continental U.S. before returning to Tacoma 113 days later. Owney continued traveling across the U.S., as well as into Canada and Mexico.
Owney’s age was unknown, but by the late 1890s he had taken ill twice, had become occasionally ill-tempered and moved with more difficulty. A postal clerk took Owney into his home in St. Louis for a brief period, but the dog would not stay still. In 1897, while Owney was in Toledo, Ohio, he bit a newspaper reporter and snapped at his handlers. The Toledo postmaster believed the dog had become uncontrollable and asked the local sheriff to put him down, which he did on June 11, 1897. Mail clerks raised money for preserving their mascot, and he was taken to the Post Office Department's headquarters in Washington, District of Columbia. In 1911, the department transferred Owney to the Smithsonian Institution.
Owney’s adventures continue to fascinate children and adults alike. Several children’s books have been written about the well-traveled pup, and he has inspired the creation of contemporary traveling Owneys. The modern-day travelers are dog toys that elementary school teachers across the U.S. use to teach geography to their classes.
Reference:
Chicago Daily Tribune, March 13, 1891, “Story of a Canine Wanderer.”
Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1897, “Owney is a Dead Dog.”
Holder, Charles Frederick. St. Nicholas; an Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks. “Owney’s Trip Around the World.” July 1896.
New York Times, December 24, 1895, “Owney a Great Traveler.”
