The Story of Spot

[Turbomallard]

Well, it's a little quiet around here, so I thought I'd throw in the following. Some of you know that I'm working on a book about airplane designer John Monnett of Sonerai, Monex, and Sonex fame. Here's a draft of a caption of one of the book's photos (also attached) that has nothing to do with airplanes per se but demonstrates the other mostly unknown aspects of operating a kit airplane company:

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The original Monnett Experimental Aircraft facility was in an area that was somewhat prone to break-ins, and John decided to get a dog to leave at the place for security. Consultations with various firms which bred and trained security dogs established that their animals were beyond his price range, and furthermore having a mean security dog on hand was not the best way to make a good impression on customers coming to look at the airplanes. Soon thereafter a local pound called John when they heard he was looking for a dog. John visited and brought back a jet-black Newfoundland, who was subsequently named Spot.

It didn't really work out. The first night on the job was not good. John came
in the next morning to find a series of blinds ripped down and a large hole chewed in a leather couch. It went downhill from there. Spot didn't seem to do anything they wanted him to, although he proved to be a saint with children, who would sometimes try to climb on and ride him. Later the company got a female Doberman named Binky and, leaving the dogs alone all night as they did, the inevitable happened: Spot finally found something he could do with reasonable success, and Monnett Experimental Aircraft got a collection of little tiny "Spottermans" which became the company’s latest product. Shortly thereafter Spot was given away to a farmer but was forced to return to the aviation security business just two days later after he killed two geese and severely mauled several pigs.

One time John wasn't having a good day to begin with and somehow Spot did something that made him madder. John grabbed a broom and chased Spot through the facility into the shop area. Spot, of course, was faster, running around obstacles like a champ, and got ahead of John. In frustration, John threw the broom at Spot, but, instead of hitting the offending animal the broom handle went right through the fabric skin of the horizontal stab of a recently completed and ready-for-painting Sonerai. Spot: 1, John: 0

 Spot was eventually adopted by two company employees, Emily and Bill Schaben, retired from the aviation security business, and lived out the rest of his days at his new owner’s home in Elgin Illinois.

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TM

[chuckar101]

Sounds like one hell of a dog.  Should have got a lab, much cooler dogs.  Whens this books finish date, sounds like a good read

[YawningMan]

Sounds like the dog was doing a great job of being a dog, and a poor job of being a security guard!  It shows that no matter how much the owner knows about airplanes, he's still got a lot to learn about dogs.

Dogs are awesome.  I wish I had one.

[Turbomallard]

At another point John was discussing Spot with one of his associates and said "I can't believe it... five pounds of stuff goes in his mouth and ten pounds of stuff comes out the other end."

His associate looked at Spot and said "Feed him money!"

There are some more aviation-related topics in there, too. I'm hoping the book will be out early next year. At present I'm frantically going through photos. I had very few until about a month ago, then got access to stuff I'd been waiting on for a couple of years-- thousands of photos and documents! I would like to have about six months to go through them all, but instead I had about a month or two. I've picked out about 500 shots to use, and have written captions for them (37 pages worth so far) after doing a fair amount of research and bothering Monnett asking where and when many shots were taken, as well as in who people are in them, etc. Now I'm trying to figure out where to use them in the manuscript... and it's taking a lot longer than I thought. If I ever write another book, it's going to have NO ILLUSTRATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll never take another caption for granted again!

But it is of course fun!

TM

[switchtech]

Spot definately deserves a place in your book!

Speaking of Newfoundlands.  A neighbor where I grew up had one.  Huge critter.  Looked like a bear wandering about at first glance.  We had a sheppard/collie mix.  Soon we had sheppard/collie/newfoundland mix pups.  We kept one and named him Smokie.  He liked to chase cows so we had to keep him on a 80 foot steel cable run that his leash could slide up and down across to keep him from terrifying the local livestock (there weren't many fences he couldn't find a way through, under or over).  When he did get loose he must have liked chasing skunks too - because he came back smelling like one more than once.  He tried to chase a snow plow once, but that didn't work so well, tragically.

jbs

[Voidhawk9]

The question is, however, did they ever suffer a break-in?!

[Turbomallard]

Yes, they did, at a period when they did not have a dog at the place. In typical fashion, the would-be thieves decided to climb on the roof and break in through an exhaust fan unit, seriously damaging it (mainly bending the blades) in the process. Once in, they somehow set off an alarm, then ran out a door empty handed. Oddly enough, the building walls were typical hangar construction and could easily have been cut with metalworking shears or something similar (which would have been less costly to fix).

Not too long after, the company relocated to a specially built facility (a very elaborate building of much more sophisticated construction)  in Oshkosh and remained there until going out of business in 1986. If you go to Airventure, you can see it on 20th Ave right next to the post office and Basler Aviation-- it's now CR Meyer Construction. Monnett's current company, Sonex Aircraft, is located at the northeast corner of the field, just south of runway 9/27. And, in spite of pleas from employees after a lunchtime telling of the Spot story, John has no plans for a new hangar dog...

TM