A pair of Percherons: The story of Dot and Jack

HAGUE | The story of two stalwart draft horses, Jack and Dot, may not be known beyond the shore of Lake George in Hague, but the memory of the beloved pair of muscular Percherons lives on along Pudding Island Road thanks to a fading roadside marker and a private lane named after them.

In 1943, Charles and Miriam Parlin purchased an abandoned farm just north of Silver Bay. "The property included two barns, one farm cottage, a large expansive meadow including a fish pond teeming with catfish, and a mountainside with a sugar house for producing maple syrup," according to lakeside resident and writer Peter Sanborn. "The parcel stretched from the dirt road at Armes Point to just past the barn (what is today Sue and Bill Rigger’s house). It was this purchase that really completed their dream. They called it Pudding Island Farm, named for the small island that rises from the lake like a dollop of pudding."

Pudding Island Road leads south from the entrance of the Arkady Bay community. The road is a reminder of a long-gone past where a small farm greeted the sunrise on the lake's western shore. This short, old dirt road is a time capsule of what the Lake George landscape looked like in the years between the two world wars.

Today, summer cottages of the extended Parlin family dot the shoreline, but you can still see the old cornfield, a farmhouse, a barn, a forgotten springhouse, and a few rusting farm implements that memorialize the heyday of the Pudding Island Farm property.

During the mid-20th century, Dot and Jack were a common sight to passersby along the road.

At harvest, the pair of horses would be seen bringing corn stalks to the Parlin's mini-silo which still stands, vine-encrusted, along Pudding Island Road next to the old red barn, converted now into a private residence.

Dot and Jack were typical examples of the Percheron breed that originated in the Perche region of western France. The Pudding Island pair were fine examples of the breed: well-muscled, intelligent, and always willing to put in a hard day's work. Although the exact origins of Jack's and Dot's parentage are not known, their ancestors were working the fields of 17th century France before the breed was exported.

With their Lake George working careers long over, Jack and Dot should have faded from local memory — but the pair left behind an impression too beloved to die.

Today, a small, framed and fading photograph of Dot and Jack memorializes their nearly four-decade-long lifespan.

Mounted on a fence post at the entrance to Jack and Dot Lane, a private road leading down to the Parlin compound, the photo shows the pair hauling a wagon in mid-stride. It is uncertain when the photograph was taken on a sunny day, long ago.

What became of the remains of Dot and Jack? Dot was buried in the far meadow between the road and the lakeshore, while the whereabouts of Jack's remains appear to have never been recorded.

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