Under the Protection of Thor

Painting by Sinclair Stratton

After their baby was kidnapped and then accidentally and secretly killed the same night in 1932, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh acquired a powerful, fiercely protective German shepherd.

Lindbergh named him Thor, evoking “thunder, strength and the protection of mankind.” Within a week, Anne wrote, “The devotion of this dog following me everywhere is quite thrilling, like having a new beau.” Thor awakened Anne every morning with his nose on the bed.

Lindbergh trained Thor to open and close doors on command and take the family terriers for a walk on a leash. Thor would reportedly watch his mistress swim in the sea. When he judged she had swum out far enough, he would jump into the water and paddle out to her, pulling her back to shore by his tail.

They knew their later-born children were safe once they gave Thor the whispered command, “Mind the baby.”

Overcome by old age during World War II, Thor struggled to rise and follow whenever Anne passed. Lindbergh noticed that his eyes followed her every moment she remained in sight.

Thor died quietly under a hickory tree on the Lindberghs’ lawn and was buried in a grave Lindbergh dug.

“He had no pain, and I think he died as the old should die, not lingering so long that all joy is gone from the living,” Lindbergh wrote in his journal that night. “I think Thor found something worthwhile in life to the very day he died, and yet I think he was ready and willing to go. But now, for us, there is a great empty, lonely feeling in the places he used to be.”

Lindbergh’s biographer Scott Berg noted that the passage about Thor was more emotional than anything Lindbergh ever wrote about a person.

Source: ‘Lindbergh’ by A. Scott Berg