(bright upbeat music) - Every region has its dog heroes and canine companions.

The Pacific Northwest is no exception.

We've had dogs that have captured the imagination, explored the continent, rounded the world.

Even native dogs used for making blankets.

Today, we'll walk with a few of these dogs in the Mossback Den.

The Makah and Coast Salish peoples kept two distinct types of dogs in their communities.

One was the so-called village dog with short brown hair and resembling a coyote.

The other was a smaller long-haired pooch known as the Wool or Woolly dog, bred for its beautiful thick white hair.

The two types of dogs were kept apart to prevent interbreeding.

The Woolly dog produced a prodigious coat that was annually sheered in the spring, just like sheep.

Their white hair was used to weave Salish blankets, high prestige items that were also made from the hair of rare mountain goats.

At the time of early European contact explorers noted the thickness of the Woolly dog's fleece.

George Vancouver wrote that they resembled Pomeranians, but a bit larger.

The introduction of the Hudson's Bay Company wool trade blankets apparently dented the necessity of the Woolly dogs contribution to blanket art.

The dog wool seems to have been phased out by the mid 19th century and Woolly dogs vanished as a distinct breed as they were interbred with dogs brought by settlers.

Some scholars poo-pooed the idea of dog blankets, but in 1859, pelt from one Woolly dog is preserved in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, though it wasn't discovered in the collection until 2003.

And the Burke Museum has a verified Salish Woolly dog blanket in their collection.

It wasn't confirmed as one until 2016.

Interestingly, a dog closely matching the description of Woolly dogs was photographed on Vancouver Island Saanich Peninsula in the 1940s.

So maybe they didn't disappear overnight.

A dog hero that arrived with the explorers was Seaman, a Newfoundland who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition from Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia river and back in the early 1800s.

(dog howling) Seaman belonged to Captain Meriwether Lewis and is the only animal expedition member to make the entire trip out and back.

(dog barking) The trip wasn't easy for dogs or humans.

Semen was reportedly made miserable by clouds of mosquitoes.

He was bitten by a beaver and required surgery.

He was even briefly appropriated by some native admirers and he survived being eaten.

The expedition members are said to have eaten over 200 dogs on their journey, taking protein wherever they could find it when game was scarce.

Only Explorer Clark abstained from that particular dish.

Another big traveler was Owney, the postal service mascot.

Owney was an adorable terrier mutt from Albany, New York, who was adopted by railway postal workers in 1888.

He thereafter gained fame by traveling on railroad mail cars all across the nation.

He wore a harness of tags and tokens detailing his journeys.

So many that it looked like a loose suit of chain mail.

In August of 1895, Owney was put aboard a steamer in Tacoma bound for Asia and in the care of its crew, (horn blows) he crossed the Pacific and arrived in Japan where he was permitted to land in Yokohama, his papers being found to be in order.

The dog tourist, as he was called, visited China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Iran, Suez, Algiers, and the Azores.

And after quarantine, (crowd cheers) he was allowed to land in New York and was shortly put on a train to complete the around the world journey by returning to Puget sound.

After coming back to the US, Owney continued his domestic travels more famous than ever, but he was put down after biting a postal clerk in Toledo, Ohio, in 1897.

The beloved dog's journeys weren't quite at an end though.

The canine celebrity was stuffed and exhibited at Seattle's Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition in 1909.

And he is still on display in the National Postal Museum in Washington DC.

(upbeat music) Which brings us to our final dog hero.

Lassie was a sensation, a great movie star who debuted in the 1940s in an MGM picture "Lassie Come Home" in 1943, starring young Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor.

Both were upstaged by a lovely rough collie named Lassie.

The action in that first film took place in Scotland, but parts were actually filmed here on Lake Chalan.

While the scenes were brief, they inspired MGM to return to feature more of the incredible Chalan landscape in technicolor.

A sequel, "Courage of Lassie", again, starring Elizabeth Taylor, was filmed near Stehekin during World War Two in the fall of 1944.

Lassie grows up from a pup, so they needed a bunch of Lassies of different sizes for the different ages.

The wildlife Lassie encountered came from Hollywood and included a black bear, beavers, coyotes, skunks, and chipmunks.

They were shipped in to play their parts.

Nothing was left to nature, save the gorgeous scenery.

In the "Courage of Lassie", she grows up in the happiness of the cascades wilderness after being separated from her dog family.

At one point she's injured and goes missing and winds up being picked up and taken into training with an army combat unit.

She's injured in battle after a heroic act.

A damaged Lassie eventually returns home, she always finds a way, but her behavior has changed from wartime trauma and nursed back to health.

It was a poignant and timely story as the film was released in 1946, with it's message about the damage war can do even to a dog's psyche.

As a movie and television star, Lassie's message of resilience proved incredibly enduring.

More movies followed, a TV series lasting from the 1950s into the 1970s, even a PlayStation game.

Lassie is more than a dog who pulled Timmy from a well, she touched people with a message of love, loyalty, courage, and endurance that never gets old.

The Northwest was part of the backdrop for her story and the stories of these amazing dogs have a place in our history as well.

(dog howling) - [Narrator] Mossback's Northwest is made possible by the generous support of Bedrooms & More.