page_title: Lad, A Dog
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Lad, A Dog / History
caption_attribution_description: An advertisement in Red Book Magazine (Jan 1918, p. 123, New York: Hearst Corporation) for one of Albert Payson Terhune's short stories on Lad, his Rough Collie:
context_page_description: Lad: A Dog is a 1919 American novel written by Albert Payson Terhune and published by E. P. Dutton. Composed of twelve short stories first published in magazines, the novel is based on the life of Terhune's real-life Rough Collie, Lad. Born in 1902, the real-life Lad was an unregistered collie of unknown lineage originally owned by Terhune's father. Lad's death in 1918 was mourned by many of the story's fans, particularly children.
  Through the stories of Lad's adventures, Terhune expresses his views on parenting, obtaining perfect obedience without force and the nature and rights of the "well-bred". Terhune began writing the stories in 1915 at the suggestion of his Red Book Magazine editor. They gained in popularity and, as Terhune was under contractual obligation to submit something to Doubleday-Page, he collected them into novel form. After Doubleday rejected the novel, he solicited other publishers until it was picked up by Dutton. After a slow start, the novel became a best seller in the adult fiction and children's fiction markets, having been repositioned as a young adult novel by Grosset and Dunlap in the 1960s and 1970s.
context_section_description: Albert Payson Terhune was an established newspaperman and author of several books in various genres—including histories and thrillers—when he penned his first canine short story, His Mate. Ray Long, then editor for Red Book Magazine, had jokingly suggested he write a story about Lad one afternoon, when the reticent dog put his head on Long's knee after having snubbed the familiar visitor for the last year. Having already tried to market the idea of his writing dog stories to magazines for several years, Terhune readily agreed. The first story featured three Rough Collies, Lad, Lady and Knave, and used a similar formula to his previous works: an average male (Lad) protects a beautiful female (Lady) from a larger villain (Knave). Long purchased the work for Red Book for $200 and it was published in the January 1916 issue. Four magazines requested similar stories, and Terhune complied, finding them easy to write and sell. Additional stories, all featuring Lad and titled Lad Stories, were published in the Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, Hartford Courant, and the Atlantic Monthly, though Red Book remained his most consistent publisher. By 1918, the stories had grown in popularity and Terhune was paid an average of $1,000 each for the tales, with some selling for as much as $2,500,. Though marketed as fiction, even people who were acquainted with the Terhunes and Lad reportedly believed that the stories were real.
  In 1918, Long began urging Terhune to publish a book of his dog stories, though Terhune himself was not convinced at first. He considered them to be nothing more than "hack writing" and inferior to his other works. Even after Long convinced him of the public's love of the works, Terhune initially did nothing towards the goal. Later that year, Doubleday-Page, which had published Terhune's last novel Fortune, wrote asking to see his next book while reminding him that their contract gave them first refusal rights to it. Wanting to escape from that publisher due to the dismal performance of Fortune, Terhune decided to follow Long's suggestion so he could use the book of dog stories to fulfill his contractual obligation. After he collected together the twenty Lad stories he had written so far, he reorganized them into chapters and submitted the book. He was unsurprised that it was rejected, but in the rejection letter the company referred to Alfred Ollivant's 1898 novel Owd Bob and Jack London's 1903 novel The Call of the Wild as "superior pieces of work". As Terhune himself considered both authors to be unimpressive writers, he became determined that Lad: A Dog would be published. E. P. Dutton's John Macrae, who was a known dog lover, found the stories "simple but charming" and felt the public would like them greatly.
  Lad: A Dog was published by Dutton in April 1919, a year after the real-life Lad's death. Terhune continued receiving royalties for the novel up through his own death. His wife, Anice Terhune, ceased receiving the royalties after she surrendered the rights to them, along with those of Bruce and His Dog in exchange for E.P. Dutton agreeing to publish and perpetually print her work Across the Line, a supposed set of conversations she had with her late husband. With this agreement, Dutton became sole owners of the copyright to Lad: A Dog. Macrae later decided that the agreement was not completely fair to Anice and modified it to provide her a payment of $100 a month for the rest of her life, likely exceeding the profits they earned on the novels as the years passed.
caption: An advertisement in Red Book Magazine (1918) for one of Terhune's short stories on Lad
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