Most Blue Cross Medals received by an animal

The most Blue Cross Medals for bravery awarded to a single animal is two, earned by a Great Dane called Juliana (d. 1946), owned by Mr W T Britton (UK). Her first medal was for nullifying an incendiary device, dropped during the Blitz in April 1941, that had crashed into the Brittons’ home by urinating on it; the second medal was for alerting her owners to a fire that had broken out in the family’s shoe shop in November 1944.

The Blue Cross animal charity was founded in London, UK, in 1897 under the name of Our Dumb Friends League (ODFL) to advocate for the welfare of and to treat working horses. It soon began to dispense awards and financial grants to organizations and individuals that had shown care of or kindness towards a range of domestic animals.

While the charity initially focused on celebrating humans who had shown compassion to animals, the notion of awarding animals themselves for acts of bravery or loyalty first arose in 1918, when an Order of Merit (a badge rather than a medal) was created by the Blue Cross Fund Committee to commemorate military horses that participated in World War I.

The first non-human recipient of the Blue Cross Medal overall was a dog named La Cloche, who received the inaugural award in 1940. He was on board the French steamer SS Meknes on 24 July 1940 when it was torpedoed off Portland, UK, and jumped into the sea to save his owner, a French mariner, who could not swim. The first cat to receive the Blue Cross Medal, in 1942, was 19-year-old Jim, owned by Mr and Mrs Coffey of Malden, UK, who awoke his owners during a house fire at night, enabling them to escape.

One of Juliana’s medals and a portrait were found during a house clearance in Bristol and sold at auction for £1,100 to an anonymous bidder in 2013.