Mark Derr’s A Dog’s History of America shares this darkly fascinating tidbit:
Indians, like many others, ate dogs. So apparently did the Spanish — as did many whites who became desperate for food as they worked their way to the West — but they had a crueler use for dogs: They were “specifically bred and trained to hunt down and disembowel Indians,” and the Spanish followed the “practice of bringing along on any campaign chained Indian slaves as food for the dogs.” They were known as “war dogs,” and they brought terror everywhere they went.
On a more heroic note:
“A young mother was gathering beans in front of a newly built log house when she turned to fuss at her little dog for its persistent barking and saw that it was holding at bay a cougar sitting on a stump just twenty feet from her baby. The woman hastily scooped up her child and ran into the house to wait for her husband. He soon returned with his big dog and immediately tracked and killed the cougar. He found in its stomach the remains of their brave little dog.”