A few months ago, my friend Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a New York City author and documentary film maker (and fellow Syracuse University graduate), alerted me to a mystery story about a dog named Julia who was buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, Queens. All she had was a list of those buried at the cemetery, which included “Julia (1889), secretly buried dog who saved an apartment building of people from a fire.”
I told Laurie I loved a good animal mystery and would have to look into it. What I found was a remarkable story about a remarkable woman named Marie Antoinette Nathalie Dowell Pollard and her lifesaving coach dog, Julia.
