The Pictorial Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the War of the Rebellion, by Richard M. Davis [1866] gives us another glimpse of our Civil War mascots, with special tribute to the canine variety.
"They had the strangest pets in the army — such as nobody would think of taking to at home, and yet they were little touches of the gentler nature as gave one some such cordial feeling, when seeing them, as it is said residents of Bourbon county, Ky., habitually experience at so much a gallon. One of the army boys carried a red squirrel through "thick and thin" over a thousand miles, "Bun" eating hard tack like a veteran and having the freedom of the tent. Another's affections overflowed upon a slow-winking, unspeculative little owl, captured in Arkansas, and bearing a name with a decidedly classical smack to it — Minerva. A third gave his heart to a young Cumberland mountain bear.
"But chief among camp-pets were dogs. Riding on the saddle-bow, tucked into a baggage wagon, mounted on a knapsack, growling under a gun, were dogs brought to a premature end as to ears and tails, and yellow at that; pug-nosed, square-headed brutes, sleek terriers, delicate morsels of spaniels — Tray, Blanche, Sweet-heart, little dogs and all.
"A dog, like a horse, comes to love the rattle and crash of musket and cannon. There was one in an Illinois regiment — and perhaps regarded as belonging to it, though his name might not have appeared on the muster-roll — that chased half-spent shot as a kitten frolics with a ball of worsted. He was under fire, and twice wounded, and left the tip of his tail at the battle of Stone River. Woe to the man that had wantonly killed him! But there was a little white spaniel that messed with one of the batteries, and delighted in the name of "Dot," who was a special favorite. No matter what was up, that fellow's silken coat must be washed every day and there was need enough of it, for when the battery was on the march, they just plunged him into the sponge-bucket — not the tidiest chamber imaginable — that swings, like its more peaceful neighbor, the tar-bucket, under the rear axle of the gun-carriage — plumped him into that, clapped on the cover, and Dot was good for an inside passage." [p.583]