September 28, 1927
Hollywood
This is what we know: B.F. Boyd, of 1273 North Kingsley, is blind. He had a dog called Duke, and Duke’s been gone three months or more. Mr. Boyd believes his neighbor Mrs. Ada Blomquist snatched Duke, because when walking past her house he heard a whine he thought he recognized.
Unable to locate the animal along the property line, Boyd returned with his son Paul and knocked on the door, whereupon the Blomquist’s Belgian police dog "Max" knocked him down. But was it from love or blood thirst?
That’s for the court to decide, and by this afternoon, 18 people had taken the stand. Mr. Boyd seemed to sincerely believe Duke had been found, but two weeks later Mrs. Blomquist would be freed after testimony from a breeder that he’d sold her the dog when it was six months old. Boyd’s dog had been young, too, but that worked against him–the judge doubted he could possibly recognize his puppy’s bark when issued through an adult dog’s larynx.
As for Mrs. Blomquist, she got her dog back, but it cost her dearly. We don’t know what they were feeding dogs in the city kennel in 1927 save that there must have been plenty of it. The bill was $40, payable before Max could be returned to his mistress. Or perhaps that was a last bit of Solomonic trickery from Judge McConnell. In any case, she wrote the check.