Paws for Thought: Dogs of Distinction Quiz

Answer: Jules Rimet World Cup soccer trophy

The World Cup trophy was stolen while on exhibit in central London in March 1966, just four months before the World Cup soccer tournament in England. A week later, Pickles became an English national hero when he found it - even more so when England went on to win the World Cup final! Not all shaggy dog stories have a happy ending though - Pickles choked on his lead the following year and died, and the Jules Rimet trophy was stolen for a second time in Brazil in 1983 and never recovered.

Answer: Virginia Woolf

Woolf published 'Flush: a biography' in 1933 through the Hogarth Press she owned and ran with her husband Leonard Woolf. Using both fiction and non-fiction styles, Woolf explored the lives of both Flush and his owner, Barrett Browning, as well as critiques on urban life, morality, class, and the role of women. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) had earlier written a poem, 'To Flush, my Dog', which commemorated the dog's unflagging companionship during her long illness.

Answer: Greyfriars Bobby

When his owner John Gray died of tuberculosis in 1858, the terrier Bobby stayed by his graveside in Edinburgh's Greyfriars Kirk until his own death in 1872. Victorian philanthropic heiress Lady Angela Burdett-Coutts paid for a statue of Bobby to be erected the following year, which remains to this day.

In 2011, a new book by Cardiff University academic Dr. Jan Bondeson claimed that, far from mourning a beloved master, the terrier was an ownerless stray who remained in the graveyard because he was well treated by the cemetery caretaker and by hordes of visitors. Bondeson claimed that the original dog died in 1867 but was replaced by a lookalike because the Greyfriars Bobby 'legend' had become a lucrative tourist attraction.

Answer: The Dog on the Tuckerbox

Located at Snake Gully, five miles from Gundagai, the statue of the 'Dog on the Tuckerbox', unveiled in 1932, commemorates the pioneers and cattle drivers who developed the inland route from Sydney to Melbourne that is now the Hume Highway. Tuckerboxes contained a cattle driver's food and personal possessions, and the dog standing guard is a symbol of loyalty and constancy in difficult times.

The statue is based on a poem, the earliest version of which identifies the cattle driver as 'Bullocky Bill', but the dog itself - strangely - has no name. You think they'd sort that out, wouldn't you?

Answer: Mick the Miller

Mick the Miller was bred in the Irish county of Offaly and trained by Father Martin Brophy before being brought to the White City dog racing track in London where he immediately won the 1929 English Derby - going on to an unprecedented consecutive Derby win the following year. He's reckoned to have won 46 of his 61 official races, including an unbroken winning streak of 19 races. Retired after winning the St. Leger in September 1931, Mick the Miller enjoyed celebrity status until his death in 1939.

Answer: Nipper

Nipper was born in Bristol in England, and died in 1895. Three years later, Francis Barraud painted a picture, based on an old photograph of Nipper listening to the recorded voice of his original owner, Francis' brother Mark Barraud, on an Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph.

The Edison-Bell company turned down an offer to buy the painting, but a rival, The Gramophone Company, did so - along with the 'His Master's Voice' slogan - when the painting was retouched to replace the phonograph with their own Berliner gramophone.

The image and slogan are today still used by a range of companies, including the HMV retail entertainment group in Britain and Ireland.

Answer: George Gordon Byron

Boatswain, a five-year-old Newfoundland dog, died of rabies in 1808, and Lord Byron's epitaphic poem - which contrasts the honesty and simplicity of the dog to man's vanity and hypocrisy - is on Boatswain's gravestone at Newstead Abbey in Nottingham, which was Byron's estate. Byron was once described by the married Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad and dangerous to know", and he had a short and profoundly influential affair with her which shocked English society.

Answer: Handsome Dan

Yale was the first US university to have a live animal mascot for its sports teams. The original Handsome Dan served as the bulldog mascot there from 1889 until 1897, and he is now preserved in a glass case in the university's Payne Whitney Gymnasium. In 2010, the 17th Handsome Dan (named Sherman at birth!) had been in post since 2006. Southpaw is the mascot of the University of South Alabama, Wellington is the mascot at Central Washington University, and Durango is the bull mascot of the University of Nebraska at Omaha - none of these are live mascots.

Answer: Paris Hilton

Referred to as an 'accessory dog', Tinkerbell has been the best known of Paris Hilton's many miniature dogs, appearing with her on the reality TV series 'The Simple Life' that starred Hilton and Nicole Ritchie and ran for five seasons from 2003-2007. In 2009, Hilton was reported to have spent $325,000 on a 'mini mansion' doghouse for Tinkerbell and her dog companions. Bow wow!

Answer: Phiz

Helen Keller's mother became aware of the possibility of Helen (then 6 and deafblind) learning to communicate after she read Dickens' account in 'American Notes' (1842) of the pioneering work being carried out at the Boston-based Perkins Institution for the Blind. Keller's lifelong companion Anne Sullivan was subsequently appointed by the institution to work with her.

Helen Keller was not only a campaigner for people with disabilities, but a radical socialist and one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union. 'Phiz' was the pen name of Hablot Knight Browne who illustrated ten of Dickens' novels.

The other options given are the real names (i.e. not pen names) of other Dickens illustrators, but none of these did nearly as much work on Dickens' novels as Phiz.