The Master of Sunnybank

From Dogwise, my favorite doggie bookplace….

One of our favorite books is back in print: The Master of Sunnybank – A Biography of Albert Payson Terhune by Irving Litvag, originally published in 1977. Many of us grew up reading Terhune’s dog story books which featured the Collies he bred and raised at Sunnybank. And, if you hunt around, you can still find many of Terhune’s classics like Lad a Dog in used book stores. What you may not know, however, is that Terhune led a really interesting life and what is so ironic is – like so many of us – he never really planned to do what he ended up being famous for. Terhune was a newspaper writer and author of several non-dog books early in the 20th century. He wrote many books before Lad a Dog, none of which were particularly successful (he wrote a book called Super Women, biographical sketches of several famous women, for example) and he was becoming discouraged with his career as a writer. Luckily for all of us, an editor friend of his who was so impressed with Terhune’s dogs encouraged him to write a story about Lad, and the rest is history. Whether you are a Collie person or not, this book is a fun read.