Chuck in his own words
Chuck’s 1968 book Stop! Sit! and Think preserves his stories about the dogs and the development of his ideas. His 1975 spoken LP, Educate Your Dog by the Eisenmann Method, lets us hear him explain those ideas in his own voice. Both are primary sources for what he believed and remembered. We compare dates, family relationships and details about individual dogs with contemporary material where we can.
Archives and institutional collections
The Oklahoma Historical Society’s Gateway to Oklahoma History holds David Valega’s 1975 photograph of Chuck with a dog the archive identifies as Hobo at Crossroads Mall. The link opens the archive record; the photograph is not reproduced here.
The official Canada 1964 yearbook, published by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, pictures London with three stand-ins on page 124. It does not name the stand-ins individually.
The American Film Institute Catalog records the 1958 film The Littlest Hobo and the 1960 feature My Dog, Buddy. These formal film records help establish credits and production history.
Newspapers, magazines and publicity
Contemporary reporting helps us trace ballpark appearances, demonstrations, touring groups and television work. It ranges from local newspapers to LIFE magazine’s July 1955 account of London at Kearney. Surviving publicity, including an ABC Television print from 1964, shows how the dogs and programmes were presented to audiences at the time.
Publicity and captions tell us what was said or printed, but a familiar dog name does not always identify one individual dog.
How we handle the sources
Chuck’s recollections tell us how he understood his life with the dogs. A newspaper written at the time, a film credit, a publicity caption, an archival catalogue description and a later memory each answer different questions. We compare them rather than treating them as interchangeable proof. Where a source names a dog or describes a performance, we make clear who made that identification or claim.
Behind the website
A working research database brings together the dogs, dates, events, sources, photographs and open questions. Wherever possible, its records lead back to the material they came from. The website is the readable story built from that work.
Can you add something to the story?
A photograph, programme, pedigree, newspaper cutting or personal memory may help answer a question that has been open for decades. If you have something that may help, we would be glad to hear from you.