Tuffy

Tuffy in 1936.

Before Chaser, the Border Collie who knew hundreds of objects by name in the 2010s, there was Tuffy, the Hollywood dog who stunned John Hopkins University scholars by correctly identifying and retrieving around fifty unique objects in the 1930s.

As a puppy, Tuffy was given to Gerhardt Orvedahl, South Dakota cowboy, while he recovered from a riding accident. Needing company and distraction, Orvedahl began training the pup to retriever and know objects by name, from coins to potatoes. An Australian Shepherd mixed with either Border Collie or Rough Collie, Tuffy was a born working dog and cowhand, fitting in effortlessly to ranch life while learning more and more, including the skill of leading horses by rein and very long stays over the years at home from 1930 to 1935.

When Orvedahl imagined more and took Tuffy to Hollywood, it wasn’t long before the handsome dog with one ice-blue eye drew attention from a Paramount producer. Tuffy landed his first cameo role before the end of 1935 in Nevada. In 1936 he gained small parts in more western dramas like Drift Fence while his reputation grew so that before the year was out Tuffy would appear in six films, most notably The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, his only Technicolor production, which originally had no part for a dog at all, but one was written in especially for Tuffy.

He went on to act until Brigham Young in 1940, in which he is only seen in a glimpse, before an illness halted his movie career. He died in 1946 at age sixteen.