Arthur Haggarty has passed this past June. He was known mostly as Captain Haggarty. I never did discover where this honorific came from. At one point he was involved in training military dogs. So perhaps he was in the military (I’d bet… the Army).

I didn’t know Captain Haggarty well. He started communicating with me only a couple of years ago. He was a man confident in himself and pretty much treated the dog training world as though he owned it. And who am I to argue?

He teased that I was a TPR; that being a Total Positive Reinforcement trainer I engendered a kind of “sissy dog” (his words). But on another point he and I completely agree… that we should not anthropomorphize dogs. Dogs are dogs, not people.

I find his passing as somewhat tragic. Advocates for dogs are rarer in our society than you might think. They are still thought of by the greater populace as a domesticated beast, about as important as a goat or a bunny rabbit.

Captain Haggarty was the original dog whisperer though he was never so pretentious as to refer to himself as such. He was the original dog trainer to the stars!

He was an actor, appearing in such diverse films as The Great Gatsby and The Eyes of Laura Mars. Most of us of my age are more likely to remember him as Mr. Clean on television commercials for P&G.

With Captain Haggarty passes an era. He’ll have many friends on the other side of the bridge.