An Historic Question

The bipeds once again left us for a day (& in the care of the fun neighbor, oh boy! Treats!) to go to Boston (as in "terriers"). They saw lots of historically important places, including the site of the Boston Massacre.

Now look at this print:

It's a ficticious depiction of an incident that led to a really really big fight between the English (as in "bulldog") and the English (as in"bulldog") colonists that lived in America, who became the Americans (as in "bulldog"). Confusing, yes? Anyway, all woo need to know is that this incident boiled down to a "stoopid fight", and the politicians dubbed it "The Boston Massacre" because 5 colonists got killed & 6 more were wounded.

A guy named Paul Revere made this engraving and as woo can see, he stuck a little dog in the foreground, (who, of course, would never have stood still with all that ruckus going on around him!) Apparently this has confused many people, as there is no explanation given of why Paul Revere stuck a dog in the scene.

Some people think it represents that the colonies have "gone to the dogs". Mom thinks that it is meant to inspire the colonists to remain faithful to their cause, i.e. freedom from British oppression. (Sounds a little too cerebral & high-falutin' to us).

We think Paul Revere just liked dogs and Scruffy filled the space nicely. (Jack decided to name him.) Of course, its possible P.R. just added Scruffy cause using dogs & kids is a good sales gimmick. But what do we know?

So, our question to woo is, why do woo think the dog is there?

We also think Scruffy was a real dog cause mom snapped this pooch in Quincy Market and we think he looks like he could be one of Scruffy's descendants:

If woo want to read a British & an American account of what happened, go read about the Boston Massacre. Or woo can just accept what the docent told mom: a bunch of youths were taunting the British soldier on guard and throwing snowballs at him, which made him fear for his life, so he went & got a few friends to come protect him from the mean American boys. Then a shouting match started up, more people gathered, and when a church bell started ringing, (which was the signal for a fire alarm), someone shouted "Fire!" and, well, the British did. Oops.

Woos & a-roos,

Star & Jack a-roo