Brian Patrick Duggan

Brian Patrick Duggan is the author of “General Custer, Libbie Custer and their Dogs: A Passion for Hounds, from the Civil War to Little Bighorn,” and the award-winning “Saluki: The Desert Hound and the English Travelers Who Brought It to the West.”

So, that’s the beginning of the formal blurb. Here’s the more interesting stuff.

I’m a canine historian–storyteller, and believe that history should be told in a friendly, informative style. My articles about dogs have won national awards with several having been published internationally. Of these, “Dear Miss Amherst ... Yours Sincerely, T.E. Lawrence” revealed a previously unknown connection between Lawrence of Arabia and Salukis —and which started me on my first book.

I was a university technology educator for 33 years in the University of California and California State University systems (my degrees are in Theatre/Film and Instructional Technology/Education). Now I’m the editor for McFarland Publishers’ Dogs in Our World series. My wife, Wendy, and I live in Central California with our Salukis whom we rarely shift off the sofa when we need a seat …

As a dog show judge I’ve traveled to Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, and all over the U.S. I’m currently president of the Saluki Club of America and the Saluki Club of Greater San Francisco.

Some of my favorite adventures include:

• Taking a formal oath to do research at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and then getting locked in after closing.

• Handling the bones of the first Saluki in England.

• Being arguably the only person to have eaten at both a Norwich pub built on the site of a medieval witch-burning pit and at the house where the conspirators plotted to assassinate President Lincoln.

• Sitting in the science fiction author Robert Heinlein's writing chair.

• Sleeping in a haunted mill house.

• Hiking to the spot where General George Armstrong Custer was last with his favorite staghounds before the battle of Little Bighorn.

• Setting microphones for astronaut Kathy Sullivan, astronomer Carl Sagan, author Tom Wolf, and the amazing Dr. Stephen Hawking.