Old Drum is not just any dog.
In fact, its importance was such that it marked a before and after in history.
And it is that he starred in an episode that would be definitive for the arrival of the long-awaited recognition of animal rights.
It all goes back to 1869, when a Missouri farmer, owner of a Foxhound breed called Old Drum, had a neighbor who hated animals, and who repeatedly threatened to kill his dog.
One night, the owner of Old Drum found his dog dead from a gunshot wound near his neighbor's house.
Being evident who was the main suspect in the murder, the farmer denounced him.
But at that time, such acts were not even considered a crime, so the complaint was in vain and even came to be mocked.
But the interest of a prestigious lawyer in the area, to whom the farmer was able to explain his case, turned the tables.
He agreed to take the case and both managed to go to trial, winning in court thanks to the speech used by the lawyer appealing to fidelity and the various qualities that a dog bestowed on a family.
From there would also be born the famous reference of man's best friend.
Such an event marked the beginning of a new era in the judicial history of the United States, when the rights of animals were recognized for the first time.
Today a statue stands in memory of Old Drum and the battle won for such rights.
Few lawyers in 19th-century America could beat George Graham Vest.
A native of Frankfort, in the state of Kentucky, and graduated as a lawyer at the University of Virginia, he was a confirmed southerner, with all the good and bad of that category. But no one questioned his abilities as a lawyer or his abilities to oratory and win debates.
Thirty-nine years old, with a wife and three children, on September 23, 1870, Vest took on the case destined to raise him to worldwide legal fame.
He then agreed to represent farmer Charles Burden, whose best hunting dog, a greyhound named "Old Drum" was found dead from a bullet to the head near the home of his neighbor, the wealthy Leonidas Hornsby.
The same one who, some time before, had expressed his intention to kill him if he found him on his property, because he understood that he entered at night and killed his sheep.
There was hardly another more publicized dog in the county, for Burden was full of praise for his hunting abilities before his friends, drinks in between in the tavern, while the patient Old Drum waited for him lying in front of the door of the premises, but from the outside since animals were not allowed there.
When Burden, in terrible pain at the loss of his canine friend, went to the courts of Warrensbourg to seek justice, he was told that since dogs are not human, he could not file a criminal complaint against his neighbor and all he could ask for was compensation for damages, which in the state was capped at $150. They also told him to find a good lawyer; and the farmer went with Vest.
Any other lawyer would have avoided the case.
Hornsby was a powerful man and there was no greater connection between Hornsby and the dog's death than his previous statements and the fact that he had been found dead near his home.
All very circumstantial, without any conclusive evidence.
But as a southern man, George Graham Vest fully understood the potential of the case and began to push the issue.
He publicly declared that he would "win the case or personally apologize to every dog in Missouri," after which he put the suspect Leonidas Hornsby in the defendants' box.
The process, with its multiple witnesses for and against, generated, from the start, countless gossip, comments and the like.
At the close of the trial, the matter was right where it had started: there was no conclusive evidence of Hornsby's “guilt” in the matter, although the indications pointed fully at him.
It is at this point that Vest pronounces in his closing speech, equivalent to the argument of the parties in our judicial process, the words that went down in the universal history of the trials, with the name of «elegy to the dog».
Said piece of oratory, developed as an idea-force, a phrase destined to take root in popular culture of all time: «Gentlemen of the jury: the best friend a man can have (...) The only, absolute and best friend he has man in this selfish world, the only one who will not betray or deny him, is his dog”.
He didn't say a word about the evidence he collected, or why he understood Leonidas Hornsby to be guilty.
Vest knew where to hit the southern soul, still healing from the ignominy of losing the Civil War, to get results.
Therefore, he spoke of the loyalty of dogs to their owners.
By the time it was over, the entire courtroom was so moved, from judge to audience to jury, that a deathly silence seemed to descend that no one dared to break.
When the jury met, it was clear to all that someone had to pay for the death of the faithful Old Drum and the closest one was Hornsby.
These are the advantages of the intimate conviction system, in which what 12 people believe translates into a verdict. And all of them, without exception, were deeply moved by Vest's words.
They unanimously ordered Hornsby to pay $550 in damages.
That the sum was $400 more than the law required did not seem to bother anyone.
Nor to the Missouri Supreme Court, where the condemned man appealed and Vest beat him again.
Later, the speech took on a life of its own, and that is how the phrase "dog is man's best friend" came to us.
In memory of the lawsuit, in 1958 the city of Warrensburg, where the speech took place, erected a bronze statue of Old Drum, just outside the courthouse where his case was tried.
