Was the Ingallses’ dog, Jack, an English bulldog or an American bulldog? I honestly don’t know for sure, but I’d like to think that Jack was an English bulldog.
The photo above is of Pearce’s new English bulldog puppy, “a tawny animal and brindled.” And cute as a button.
When I think about Jack, I do think of the phrase “tawny-colored and brindled.” Don’t you? Surely Wilder must have described Jack in this way in the “Little House” books more times that she described him as merely brown. So I went looking.
In Little House in the Big Woods, Jack is described as a brindle bulldog, twice. In Little House on the Prairie, Jack is described as a brindle bulldog (once) and with a brindled head (once). The “tawny animal and brindled” describes the animal who creeps near the campfire and turns out to be Jack, in Chapter 3, “Camp on the High Prairie.” In both On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake, Wilder uses both the words tawny and brindled, but not to describe Jack.
So there you have it. Jack was a brown brindle bulldog.
