Pioneer Pets

Dogs and cats are as Western as six-guns and Stetsons—and a lot more lovable. In the Old West, dogs were common—and necessary. Cats, not at first, but soon were as essential to day-to-day living as fresh water and a cooking fire Dogs have been roaming North America since at least 10,000 B.C., and were the most important domestic animal on the continent until the Spanish arrived with the horse.  Cats, on the other hand, didn’t arrive in the Western Hemisphere until they chased some rats