page_title: Owney (dog)
section_title: Unofficial mascot
hierarchical_section_title: Owney (dog) / Story / Unofficial mascot
caption_attribution_description: Description: Owney was a stray dog who wandered into the Albany, New York, post office in 1888. The clerks let him stay the night, and he fell asleep on a pile of empty mailbags. Owney was attracted to the texture or scent of the mailbags and began to follow them, first onto mail wagons and then onto mail trains. Owney began to ride with the bags on Railway Post Office (RPO) train cars across the state, and then the country. The RPO clerks adopted Owney as their unofficial mascot, marking his travels by placing medals and tags from his stops on his collar. Creator/Photographer: Unidentified photographer Medium: Medium unknown Culture: American Geography: USA Date: 1895 Collection: Owney Collection Persistent URL: http://photography.si.edu/SearchImage.aspx?t=5&amp;id=3411&amp;q=A.2008-42 Repository: National Postal Museum Accession number: A.2008-42
context_page_description: Owney, was a terrier mix adopted as the first unofficial postal mascot by the Albany, New York, post office about 1888. The Albany mail professionals recommended the dog to their Railway Mail Service colleagues, and he became a nationwide mascot for nine years. He traveled throughout the 48 contiguous United States and voyaged around the world traveling over 140,000 miles in his lifetime as a mascot of the Railway Post Office and the United States Postal Service. He is best known for being the subject of commemorative activities, including a 2011 U.S. postage stamp.
context_section_description: Owney belonged to a clerk at the Albany post office who would often come with him to work.  Owney seemed to love the smell of the mail bags and would sleep on the bags. The clerk quit the Albany post office but knew that Owney was happier at the post office with the mail bags.
  Owney usually slept on the mail bags, and when they were moved, Owney went with them. He was considered to be good luck by postal railway clerks, since no train he rode on was ever in a wreck. He was a welcome addition in any railway post office; he was a faithful guardian of railway mail and the bags it was carried in, and would not allow anyone other than mail clerks to touch the bags.
  This was an important duty and Owney was well-situated for it, as the Albany train station was a key division point on the New York Central railroad system, one of the two largest railroads in the U.S. at that time. Mail trains from Albany rolled eastward to Boston, south to New York City, and westward to Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, and points further west. As a contemporary book recounted: "The terrier 'Owney' travels from one end of the country to the other in the postal cars, tagged through, petted, talked to, looked out for, as a brother, almost. But sometimes, no matter what the attention, he suddenly departs for the south, the east, or the west, and is not seen again for months." In 1893 he was feared dead after having disappeared, but it turned out he was involved in an accident in Canada.
  As Owney's trips grew longer, the postal clerks at Albany became concerned that the dog be identified, and, if necessary returned to them. They bought a dog collar with a metal tag that read: "Owney, Post Office, Albany, New York". To this collar, the various railway post offices that saw Owney added individual dog tags. The collar and tags made the mixed-breed terrier the unofficial mascot of the U.S. Railway Mail Service, and as shown by the 2011 postage stamp issued in his honor, his identifications became an essential element of his identity.
  Owney received tags everywhere he went, and as he moved they jingled like sleigh bells. He received from Winnona Kilbridge of the Los Angeles Kennel Club a medal for "Best Traveled Dog" of 1893. Owney received in 1894 from a Mr. William Winter Wagner of Chicago a "Globe Trotter" medal. His collection of tags grew so large that United States Postmaster General John Wanamaker gave him a coat to display them all. Wanamaker also announced that Owney was then the Official Mascot of the Rail Mail Service. The actual number of dog tags and medals Owney received is unknown. Despite the jacket, the mass became impossible for the small dog to carry. Clerks would remove tags and forward them to Albany or Washington D.C. for safekeeping. One source suggests that 1,017 medals and tokens were bestowed upon the mascot. Some of these tags did not survive; the National Postal Museum currently has 372 Owney tags in its collections. Other Owney tokens, trinkets, and medals are also in the NPM collection and are displayed there.
  One of Owney's services "Above and Beyond the Call of Duty" reported is when he stayed behind to protect a mail pouch that had accidentally fallen out of a wagon during a delivery route he was on. When the clerks returned to the main Post Office after the deliveries, not only was a bag of mail missing but so was Owney. They backtracked their steps and eventually found Owney lying on top of the mailbag. Owney guarded the mail pouch until someone from the Post Office showed up.
caption: Owney with some of his dog tags
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "7944", "Image ImageLength": "6344", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "800", "Image YResolution": "800", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2008:05:14 18:01:13", "Image ExifOffset": "256", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "394", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7785", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "7944", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "6344"}