Ever wonder where the old saying, "A man's best friend is his dog," came from? Well, if you guessed Warrensburg, Missouri, you were right!
Senator George Graham Vest won a court battle and the hearts of dog lovers everywhere when he paid his famous tribute to the dog during the 1870 Burden vs. Hornsby court case in Warrensburg. The speech included the line, "The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog."
The "eulogy to the dog" won the case for Charles Burden whose favorite hound, Old Drum, was shot by a neighbor & *******-in-law, Leonidas Hornsby, who had sworn to shoot the first sheep-******* dog that came onto his land. Although Hornsby had hunted with Drum and acknowledged him to be one of the best hunting dogs he had ever seen, he also suspected that Drum was the dog that had been ******* his sheep. Hornsby, carried out his threat when one night a dog was found prowling in his yard. That dog was Old Drum.
