Torchwood Inspired Dog Names

Captain Jack Harkness is known to be a bit of a scoundrel. He is an irrepressible flirt; he simply can’t seem to resist flirting with beautiful women, beautiful men, and even beautiful aliens. While he is known as a former con-man and has no issue with lying and manipulating both people and circumstances, he is also deeply devoted to protecting mankind and the world that they live on. He is rendered essentially immortal by his interactions with Doctor Who and his companion Rose Tyler, but this immortality comes at a price. He endures many unimaginable hardships in his devotion to mankind, and he dies painfully over and over again, only to be resurrected minutes later. Despite many of these deaths coming at the hands of unscrupulous people who reside on this planet, he maintains his protective stance through all of it, even to the point of sacrificing those who are close to him for the greater good.

In the early twentieth century, another Jack was selflessly devoted to the health and welfare of humankind, and he consistently put himself in danger to protect others. Swansea Jack was a black coated retriever type dog, typically referred to as a Newfoundland, but much smaller and lighter in build than the Newfoundland breed as we know it today. He lived near the Swansea docks with his human companion, William Thomas. He made his first recorded life-saving rescue when he was just a year old, saving the life of a drowning twelve-year-old boy by dragging him out of the ocean by the scruff of his neck. He wasn’t trained nor instructed to rescue people from the river and seas that surrounded him, but whenever he heard cries for help, he was more than willing to put his life on the line by plunging into the cold and dangerous waters to drag them safely back to shore. Over the next ten or so years, he answered as many calls as he could. He was recorded as saving at least twenty-seven people from drowning, though many of the residents who knew him reported that the number was much higher than that.

He earned many titles and awards for his bravery while he was alive, including “Bravest Dog of the Year” in 1936, and two bronze medals for bravery awarded by the National Canine Defense League, the only canine to date to have done so. He died in 1937, but he continued to inspire those who knew him, well beyond his death. A burial monument was donated by public subscription and stands near St Helen’s Rugby Ground on the Promenade, and in 2000, nearly sixty years after crossing the rainbow bridge, Swansea Jack was named the “Dog of the Century” by NewFound Friends of Bristol, a company that now trains dogs in aquatic rescue.