Loyal Sheep Dog

Loyal Sheep Dog

December 12th, 1953, Tip and her master, Joseph Tagg, an eighty-one year-old retired gamekeeper from Bamford, England, had been out on one of their long walks on the Howden (high Derbyshire) moors when the old man passed away.
For fifteen weeks search parties failed, and were set back due to severe frost and snow storms. The man and dog were presumed dead, when, a couple of men rounding up stray sheep in early spring came across the body of Tip’s master, with a starving and sickly Tip on guard beside it. She had waited for over three months, through the worst of winter, for help to come for the one she loved.
Tip spent her last year with a niece of Joseph Tagg, were she was awarded the highest order of canine chivalry. A year after her death, a memorial shrine was unveiled along the banks of Derwent Dam, in Derbyshire.