14 years spent on the owner's grave: the burial of the famous Skye Terrier from the Disney movie was found
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A tiny dog coffin was found in the yard of a house in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, after 18 months of searching.
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Following the film's release, furry actor Bobby had a period of fame and raised thousands of pounds for charity through a series of special appearances, according to the Daily Mail.
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The Dolphinton House, where Bobby was buried in 1974, once belonged to the former Chief Constable of the Lothian Police and Border Police, William Merrilis.
Mr. Merrilis, who became a personal friend of Walt Disney during the filming of the film, gave this house to Bobby after the film's release.
From 1963, Bobby lived with Chief Inspector John Turner and his family in Morningside, Edinburgh until the dog's death in 1974, but his body was buried at Dolphinton.
John Turner's nephew, 54-year-old David Hunter, took charge searching for Bobby's grave after learning that the burial site in Dolphinton is going to be bulldozed and built on.
And after 18 months of searching, he succeeded. “Honestly, the fact that we finally found Bobby still boggles my mind,” Hunter said.
The real Greyfriar Bobby was born in 1856 and lived for two years with his master John Gray – a devotee night watchman of the Edinburgh City Police.
When John Gray died, he was buried in Greyfriars Cemetery at the Franciscan Church in Edinburgh's Old Town. His dog Bobby spent 14 years, the rest of his life, sitting on his owner's grave.
In 1914, the American writer Eleanor Atkinson wrote a novel of the same name about the puppy. And it was this book that inspired Disney's 1961 film Bobby of Greyfriars: The True Story.
Negotiations are currently underway to rebury the little actor's remains in Edinburgh next to the real Bobby's remains, located outside the gates of the Greyffers cemetery, where the owner, John Gray himself, is buried. Hunter held preliminary talks with the Church of Scotland and Edinburgh City Council to have Bobby reburied there.
Today, a statue in his honor stands in front of this cemetery and is visited by millions of tourists every year.
” I felt it was a very inappropriate end for this movie star at the time, and I wanted to put in the effort to find it,” Hunter said. He adds: “We had a lot of discussions about whether it was right to bring Bobby to Edinburgh when Merrilli buried him at Dolphinton. But we decided that by returning him to Edinburgh, in Greyfriars Cemetery, he would become immortal.”
While it is commonly believed that Bobby of Greyfriars was a Skye Terrier, a book published last year states that he was most likely a Dandie Dinmont Terrier. After all, Skye Terriers, as a rule, live on the Isle of Skye, about 362 km from Edinburgh, and Dandie Dinmont Terriers were bred in Borders, just 72 km from the Scottish capital.
