Old Yeller

Summary

Old Yeller is narrated by Travis Coates, who looks back on the year he was fourteen, in the late 1860s, on his family's homestead near the settlement of Salt Licks in the Texas Hill Country. After the Civil War cattle money is scarce, so Papa joins the other men of the settlement on a long drive to sell cattle in Kansas, leaving Travis as the man of the place with Mama and his little brother, Arliss. A big, ugly yellow stray turns up and steals a whole side of hog meat, and Travis wants to run him off, but Arliss claims him. Travis comes round when the dog stands between Arliss and a furious mother bear after the little boy grabs her cub at the spring. From then on Old Yeller works beside Travis: he helps catch and mark the half-wild hogs, guards the corn patch, and helps manage the cattle. Travis learns from the neighbor Bud Searcy and his granddaughter Lisbeth that the dog has been raiding the settlement for food. When Travis is trapped among a pack of wild hogs and badly cut by their tusks, Old Yeller fights them off and is torn open himself; Mama sews up the dog's wounds and tends Travis through weeks of recovery. A cowman named Burn Sanderson then arrives to claim the dog, but seeing how Arliss loves him, he trades Old Yeller to the boy for a horned toad and a home-cooked meal, and warns the family that hydrophobia is spreading through the country. Soon a cow and other animals go mad. One night, while Mama and Lisbeth are burning a dead cow, a rabid wolf attacks them, and Old Yeller kills it but is bitten. Knowing the dog will sicken, Mama asks Travis to shoot him, and he does. Grieving and angry, Travis barely notices when Papa returns with a horse for him and tells him that life can be hard but a man must not let the hard parts spoil the good. Lisbeth has given the family a pup fathered by Old Yeller; when Travis catches it stealing food just as the old dog used to, he decides it will do. Harper & Brothers published the book in 1956 with drawings by Carl Burger; it received a 1957 Newbery Honor, and Disney filmed it in 1957.

Top Lessons

• Becoming the man of the place

  Papa leaves Travis in charge, and the boy plows, hunts, marks hogs and guards his mother and brother. The book shows responsibility as something that grows by doing hard work day after day, and that sometimes asks for a choice no one else can make.

• Loyalty that gives everything

  Old Yeller faces a bear, a pack of wild hogs and a rabid wolf to protect the family. His courage costs him his life, and the family's love for him is measured by how much they lose.

• Grief and going on

  After he shoots Old Yeller, Travis cannot find joy in anything, even his new horse. Papa tells him that life brings hard things but a person must not let them spoil the good, and the pup that steals food like the old dog helps Travis begin again.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The climax turns on hydrophobia, the period name for rabies, spreading among wild animals and stock in the Hill Country. In the 1860s there was no treatment; Pasteur's post-exposure vaccine came only in 1885, and a bitten animal or person could only be watched. The book shows the frontier understanding of the disease plainly: animals turn strange and aggressive, a bitten dog must be destroyed before he sickens, and carcasses are burned. Frontier wound care also appears: after the hog fight Mama sews up Old Yeller's torn body and nurses Travis's slashed leg at home, with no doctor in reach. Travis's numb, angry grief after shooting the dog, and Papa's counsel on his return, give a clear picture of a boy's bereavement. Readings of the disease's course should be checked against the text, which presents it as the family experienced it rather than clinically.

• The hog fight

  Travis is gashed by wild hogs and Old Yeller is ripped open; Mama stitches the dog and tends Travis through weeks of recovery.

• Burn Sanderson's visit

  Sanderson warns the family that hydrophobia is loose in the country and describes how it spreads among animals.

• The wolf at the fire

  A rabid wolf attacks Mama and Lisbeth at night; Old Yeller kills it and is bitten, and Mama and Travis decide he must be shot.

• Final chapter

  Travis's grief after the shooting and Papa's words to him on his return.