Molosser Moment #11

Even as battles go, the medieval clash at Agincourt in northern France was a particularly bloody affair. English nobleman Sir Piers Legh II was wounded there in 1415, and legend has it that his loyal Mastiff bitch stood over him for hours while the battle raged around them. Seriously wounded, Legh eventually died in Paris, and his corpse along with the Mastiff, who by now was in whelp, returned to his ancestral home, Lyme Hall. There, she became the foundation of the Lyme Hall Mastiffs. Though they had narrower heads and snipier muzzles than the modern Mastiffs we admire today, the Lyme Hall dogs survived until the early 20th Century, when the last of their kind were put down during World War I, as an act of patriotism in the face of food shortages.

Lion, one of the last of the Lyme Hall Mastiffs, painted by J.T. Nettleship (1847-1902).