Owney was a real-life dog who became the unofficial mascot of the US Postal Service in the late 19th century.
He was a mutt, a mix of various breeds, and was found wandering around the Albany Post Office in New York.
Owney's job was to ride on mail trains and protect the mailbags from any potential threats.
He was so good at his job that the postal workers took him along on their journeys, and soon he became a beloved fixture on the mail routes.
Additional reading: Owney the Dog
Owney's Travels
Owney slipped onto a rail car one day and caught another train back to Albany, starting a regular travel routine.
He always returned to the home office in Albany, where the clerks worried about losing him and gave him a collar with the inscription, “Owney, Albany P.O., N.Y.”
Rail travel in the 1880s and 1890s was a hazardous job for postal workers, with over 80 mail clerks killed and over 2000 injured between 1890 and 1900.
Owney became a good luck charm for the trains, with the men believing that if he was traveling with them, the rail trip would be a safe one.
For eleven years, Owney traveled the U.S. from New York to California, accumulating a collection of tags to prove it.
He wore a "travel card" on his collar, which the staff in Albany would start fresh before each trip, removing and preserving the tags from his previous trip.
The tag collection became so large that Postmaster General John Wanamaker presented Owney with a coat on which to display all his tags.
Owney eventually traveled internationally, visiting Japan and Asia and Europe in 1895, before returning home to Albany.
Owney and the Mail
Owney became a good luck charm for the trains, with postal clerks believing that if he was traveling with them, the rail trip would be a safe one.
Rail travel in the 1880s and 1890s was a hazardous job for postal workers, with over 80 mail clerks killed and over 2000 injured between 1890 and 1900.
Owney loved the smell of mail bags and would often sleep on them at the Albany post office, where he was considered a faithful guardian of railway mail.
He would not allow anyone other than mail clerks to touch the bags, and his presence was a welcome addition to any railway post office.
Owney traveled extensively, riding on trains from Albany to Boston, New York City, and points further west, making him a familiar sight to postal clerks across the country.
The postal clerks at Albany became concerned for his safety, so they bought him a dog collar with a metal tag that read: "Owney, Post Office, Albany, New York".
As Owney traveled, other post offices would attach their own tags to his collar, making him the unofficial mascot of the U.S. Railway Mail Service.
The tags accumulated, and Owney was given a jacket to hold them, but eventually, they became too heavy, and clerks would remove some and forward them to Albany or Washington D.C. for safekeeping.
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