The shaggy dog story, often told but seldom with the same angle, has appeared yet again in a new and, admittedly, interesting online platform.
The Bell is a news and features platform similar to but not the same as The Dumbarton Democrat. The difference is that they charge for what they do; we don’t.
Below is the intro to their story. You can get every word of it – and a few pictures – plus the whole shebang afterwards by accessing it at:
The Glasgow Bell
Cassie wasn’t feeling herself the day she jumped from Overtoun Bridge. The three-year-old springer spaniel normally sat patiently before her walks, waiting for her owner, Alice Trevorrow, to lock up the car and put her lead on. But on that summer day, something was off; Cassie was agitated, nose in the air. She was fixated on something.
Trevorrow and her son got out of the car, and walked towards Cassie, trying to work out what she was staring at.
Then, suddenly, the dog bolted, jumping straight off the bridge and plummeting 50 feet to rocky ground below.
“Her scream I still hear,” Trevorrow says.
Somehow, Cassie survived. “A miracle really,” Trevorrow says. “She was in so much pain and couldn’t put weight on her back legs but yet nothing was broken. We were blessed but many are not.”
Cassie is one of a supposed legion of dogs who’ve leaped from Overtoun’s gothic arches since 2005. Popular myth has it that the bridge turns hounds into lemmings. The story has been percolated by everyone from William Shatner to a new generation of social media creators, hungry for views. Respected newspapers, like the New York Times, have reported straight-facedly on the ‘dog suicide bridge’. Top ‘estimates’ of dogs that have gone over have hit 600.
Explanations for the phenomenon span the supernatural — a ghost! Who targets dogs! — and the calmly rational — smells! That dogs love! None have been conclusively proven.
In fact, now people are wondering whether any dogs have crossed the bridge to get to the other side. Is Overtoun’s doggy suicide claim to fame actually rooted in fact? I had to find out.
Hope you enjoyed this, and you will now read The Bell.
The old story of dog doesn’t eat dog in the newspaper game doesn’t apply here. Bill Heaney