Rummaging around on YouTube.
Hey, they had yet another clip from the Grateful Dead video Touch of Grey, but this time in "good quality".
Scrolling through the comments, there was one about "Bobby's dog", followed by another one "not Bobby's dog".
Ever since I had heard the story of this dog, I thought there ought to be a few lines somewhere on the web that tell some of his story.
So, here is what I know. The source is what journalists call "a reliable source".
The dog was named after the Grateful Dead song "Tennessee Jed", and was owned by a young woman who was a fixture on tour.
Jed was a fixture at venues that had, predictably and understandably, a "no dogs in the venue" policy. Jed became known to the Blue Coats of event security because of his skill in evading them.
When the young woman decided to have Jed inside the show, the drill would be something like this.
The two of them would walk up to the gate. A few yards from the gate, she'd tell him to sit. Jed could be very patient. Once she had made it inside, she'd call: "Jed", and Jed would rush, dodge and evade, getting in every single time.
Even security guards who realized what the game was and shouted "watch out for that dog", "don't let that dog through", were no match for Jed.
Jed ended up in the Touch of Grey video after an audition with little competition and showcasing that one well honed skill that you can see in the video: playful evasion of security guards.
The check over $25 dollars for his performance was made out in the name of Tennessee Jed, and the bank cashed it no questions asked. Simpler times indeed. Jed's life continued in much the same way after the video. Dogs don't seem to care much about fame.
But he was allowed to keep the plastic bone he proudly displays in the video, Mickey Hart's femur if you must know.
So, it came about that the young couple Jed belonged to picked up a hitchhiker who got to share the back seat with Jed.
When Jed dragged out the bone and started chewing on it, the hitchhiker asked "what kind of bone is that?"
The response was swift and, for a second, turned the hikers face the color of fresh, grey ash: "Oh that, that's from the previous hitchhiker."
Through events that are simple but documented in a way heavily stacked against Jed, the dog ended up in court later in life. He had a lawyer, a very well known one, and a defense fund to which, among others, Bobby had contributed. Jed looking like a pit bull (which he was not) was a major, if not the determining factor, for the sentence: death by lethal injection. He was placed on Death Row at Sacramento, CA, Animal Control.
But Jed had friends, and those friends had bolt cutters and flash lights.
A few days before his execution, they broke him out, and Jed became a fugitive. After crossing several state lines and laying low in the Rockies, Jed and his humans ended up in Oregon.
Their life in Oregon was uneventful until the day the local sheriff knocked on their door. A conversation followed during which the sheriff explained that he had had a visit from an animal control officer from California.
The officer had explained she was looking for a fugitive called Tennessee Jed, a vicious pit bull mix, whom the great state of California had decided to execute in the interest of public safety.
Next, the sheriff told the anxious couple he had sent the officer home, telling her he could not help her.
He then added that he expected everything to be okay and that he hoped there would be no trouble with Jed in the future. He pointed to his gun and said, "we do things differently around here."
Jed lived happily ever after and died an old dog whose fifteen seconds of antics in the video still make people smile a generation later.
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