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Hitler’s dog, Blondi

Posted on September 28, 2026 | Leave a comment

I have been doing some family research into World War II and stumbled across a reference to Hitler and his German Shepherd, Blondi.

_{Blondi, downloaded via Wikipedia. Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F051673-0059 / CC-BY-SA, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons}

There are citations quoting Hitler as saying, “The more I know people, the more I love dogs.” And his Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, seemed to relish the idea of promoting Hitler as a dog lover – to soften the dictator’s image. He said:

“The Führer has his great happiness in his dog Blondi, who has become a true companion for him… It’s good that the Führer has at least one living being who is constantly around him.”

But in the closing days of the War, as Germany’s defeat was assured and Soviet troops were closing in on Hitler’s bunker in Berlin, Hitler became distrustful of the SS officers who had provided him with cyanide capsules to commit suicide. Hitler demanded that the capsules be tested on Blondi first (they worked).

The lesson: never assume that every dog owner has the same values as you. But, let’s hope for the sake of dogs that none have the extremist personality of Adolf Hitler!

Kathleen Crisley is Fear-Free certified dog massage therapist and canine fitness trainer. She has a particular passion for working with dogs and their families to ensure injury prevention and quality of life. She specialises in working with anxious and emotionally damaged dogs. Her mobile practice, The Balanced Dog, is based in Christchurch, New Zealand

Joan Rivers was a dog lover

Posted on September 5, 2014 | 2 comments

I was never a fan of Joan Rivers. Her sense of humor was always a bit too course for my liking and, in her recent years as a fashion critic, I found many of her comments to be septic and often downright rude.

Nonetheless, I sympathize with her family, friends and fans at her loss.

There is, however, one very positive thing I can say about Joan Rivers. She loved dogs. This goes to show that we may have common ground with people who, on the face of it, we dislike. Anyone who loves dogs cannot be all bad; perhaps this fact alone will remind us to keep an open mind…

Joan Rivers and her dog, Max, who passed away earlier this year
(Photo by Chicago Now)

“Dogs are easier to love than people; they’re certainly more dependable,” Rivers once said in an interview with Chicago Now. “Once they love you, that’s it. A true friend in life is a dog.”

In her last known interview conducted in July of this year, Rivers spoke about her darker moments when, after the death of her husband in 1987 and a career that had bottomed-out, she contemplated suicide. Her dog stopped her:

What saved me was my dog jumped into my lap. I thought, “No one will take care of him.” It wasn’t a friendly dog — only to me. I adored this dog. He was theoretically a Yorkie, his mother cheated. His name was Spike. He was the way you want your dog to be, devoted only to you. I was sitting in this big empty house in Bel Air, with a phone with five extensions which we no longer needed. I had the gun in my lap, and the dog sat on the gun.