Lil’ Man’s sister Nikki has come to live with us; she was rescued from a very ugly situation after her owner died. She was pretty much totally untrained, having been chained to a barrel and fed junk food. But she’s come a long way, has slimmed down and is learning her commands well, especially “sit”. Yesterday, we went for a training/shooting walk in the neighborhood, and when I came to this Jeepster and stopped to shoot it, I commanded “sit”. She did, but not next to me; she walked over to the Jeep and sat down. Maybe she’s trying to tell me something.
That she likes Commandos better than commands? Or that she has a natural affinity to these? It’s kind of ironic, as pit bulls are often bought for protection by those involved in illicit activities. And way back in the early seventies in Iowa City, one of the bigger drug dealers drove a white Commando just like this, although he had a German Shepherd. Pits hadn’t yet come into favor for that role.
This Jeepster has seen a bit of use in its long life. These first arrived in 1966 (Full story here). It was a response to the 1963 Scout and the Bronco, which also arrived in 1966. The Jeepster sat on the longer 101″ wheelbase chassis of the CJ6, and except for the new body, was all Jeep underneath.
I suppose this would be a good choice to have two dogs in the back seat. Maybe that was Nikki’s point: “Grandpa; you need one of these“. Just the thing to add to my already questionable image in the neighborhood; I like to keep people guessing.
Given the lack of any apparent V6 badges, I’m going to assume this has (or had) the Hurricane F-head four, based on the original Willys flathead four. I’ve always wanted to have an F-head engine, just for the oddity of it.
I rather could see myself behind the wheel of this, although the harsh ride and noise might relegate it to short trips.
Maybe just the thing for me and the dogs to show up with to collect some late rent.
Beautiful dogs, Paul!
Your dog has good basic practical taste in vehicles. Works for me.
Yow! Don’t mess with that landlord. Nice job on rescuing the dog & making some progress, there was an interesting article in Esquire a few months ago about pits, and the staggering number of them abandoned and destroyed in the US.
I don’t see too many, since they are banned in Ontario.
“Maybe just the thing for me and the dogs to show up with to collect some late rent.”
Isn’t the F-100 already used to fill that role? I would think a tall Austrian landlord with a loud, beat-up truck, and two pitbulls would be scary enough for the time being, especially if I had late rent payments.
Here is a study in contrasts: Lil ‘ Man and Bagel the Wonderdog.
Which should we choose as the Official CC Mascot?
i would like to submit my dog, Bella the car-fearing meat brick, into the competition. Game on!
You’re lucky Bagel survived that walk; the dogs kept thinking he was an errant squirrel. 🙂
They seemed more interested in drinking from puddles.
The rent or your poodle.
If you came to my door to collect rent with those two dogs, I’d pay. And you’re not even my landlord.
Ha! Don’t give me ideas….Niedermeyer Neighborhood Protection Service; Just $50 per month!
Jim, I would just get Paul into a tangent-filled, bird-walking discussion about how deserving any given car is or isn’t of DS status.
like the dog and the truck. i’ve had some serious problems with pitbulls in the past but there are two in my building which are both wonderful so i’m warming to them these days.
So DD is daily dog?
Nice looking dogs and glad they were rescued, but I cannot believe they are banned in Ontario like DougD says. I imagine Eugene has the same number of colorful people as Portland in proportion to the overall population, I doubt you really stick out. This is a nice looking Jeep Commando and I hope they find or replace their rear plate before too long.
Yup, banned since 2005. As always with decisions like this it’s a complex issue.
Also, here’s the article I was talking about:
http://www.esquire.com/features/american-dog-0814
I wonder if Jeep Commandos are banned in Ontario too, I can’t remember ever seeing one. Would love to show up at work every day in that..
Good article.
My neighbour rented out a barn to someone who had a car collection that included a red Jeepster. I would see it drive out occasionally.
Beautiful pit
If your camera looks a bit like a gun, and your camera-shooting pose resembles a gun-shooting pose, maybe the dog is trying to protect the car from being literally shot. I’d guess she’s witnessed some of that.
Well, I’ve posted a pic of my 1968 Jeepster a couple of times. Although I only owned it for 7 months, it was a cool vehicle. I seriously looked into buying one in 2008, but wisely turned it down.
As for my entry in “Canine Classic”, I submit our Abby in her usual place in the evenings. She just turned 12. Don’t know how much time she has left, but she’s been a wonderful friend, and when I went through all my eye surgeries in 2003-04, she was my “nurse” when I had to stay home and do absolutely nothing for 2 weeks after each surgery!
it looks like the dogs are wearing spiky choke collars. Do they pull? If so you might try a Halti collar. It turns their head so they can’t see, and they stop pulling. No spikes needed.
They’re prong collars, and the ends are rounded. They specifically don’t choke the dog when they pull, because it distributes the tension all around their neck instead of just the front and the trachea. It creates a pinching sensation all around their neck, and these dogs have massive necks.
They’re very effective with these kinds of dogs that tend to be strong-willed. The quickly learn that they can control the feedback. If they do what they’re trained to do, keep a slack leash when walking, and most of all, don’t bolt after a squirrel or cat, then they feel nothing.
They mostly don’t really need these anymore, but it’s a safety thing. If one of them suddenly lunges for a squirrel or cat under a bush or so, it can be a challenge to control that properly, especially for someone lie Stephanie who is small. Or when I have both of them with me alone.
At this stage, I might look into a Halti collar. But as I said, if they don’t pull, they don’t feel it. And if they do feel it it’s just enough for them to correct. It’s not inhumane at all, but I can see why it looks like it. Much better than a choke collar.
Diesel says hello and nice Jeep too. I remember seeing these as a kid and thinking what’s with the flat sides? Did they run out of money for tooling?
I drive a small wagon. Yogi, the English Springer Spaniel, made me buy it instead of an entry level luxury car.
The Matrix is a perfect dog car.
…and so it the Vibe. 😉
I have to clean the way back from his last dip in the river. lol
My dog Bob is the head of ranch security here. His is also the reason I started thinking about a vehicle with a back seat. Got tired of slobbers when I took him out so now I have a 4runner. He goes everywhere with me.
I remember when the pit bull was America’s dog. Spanky and our gang. Pity about the PR catastrophe that the breeders of fighting dogs created. At least, I lay the blame mostly at their feet.
Oh yeah. The jeepster. Nice find.
My first boss back in 1977 had a Jeepster Commando just like that, his looked nearly new. It was kind of his hobby vehicle.
Great looking dogs. I really miss mine, cats just aren’t the same, and I really miss the guy on the left in this pic:
Been gone a long time now, 16+ years.
Gorgeous trio!
Dogs wiggle and wag their way into your heart. They are high maintenance compared to cats.
However, they can be trained to be incredibly useful to us humans. Think of all the variety of work they are doing: service dogs for the blind, sniffing dogs for all manner of searches: lost people in avalanches, wanted people on the run, contraband, improvised explosive devises, even bed bug infestations.
Dogs that provide therapy for severely sick people, dogs that pull sleds, and those that shepherd the herds of sheep, reindeer, goats, cattle.
It is well established that family dogs calm the nerves and prolong the lives of their owners.
Cats are less social with humans, more independent. They too calm the nerves and prolong the lives of their owners. But they are not nearly as useful and trainable.
I love them both.
Yeah, dogs are good people.Cats are OK, but they make you work to get their affection.
I have two cats that are an exception to the rule, the male is a little choosy about when he wants petting, rubbing, etc, but the female is cuddly to the point of, “Again? All right, come on up!”. Her only vices are she bites noses, mostly mine, and she throws litter all over the place when she engages in her “hobby” of spending a lot of time in the litter box moving litter around, most of it being moved onto the floor.
Our dog has been remarkably low-maintenance, but she’s a mutt and mutts are generally more “durable”, if that’s the right term.
I think the correct term may be “vigorous”. Mutts benefit from hybrid vigour.
With “high maintenance” I refer to the (almost) daily walks that are required to keep them well and to keep them well behaved.
We used to have free roaming inside-outside cats that really needed nothing but a little food and milk. They never saw a veterinarian either. But we also took in a cat that was raised in a small apartment. He showed signs of neurosis but improved a lot with the new free range habitat.
The thing about mutts is you never quite know what they will end up looking like. This was Gus the night we got him, he weighed about 15 pounds:
He grew in stages. He started out looking like a very oddly built Dachshund mix with a giant head and very thick and straight legs. He got longer and longer, until he was as long as my 96 pound Lab was, then he grew vertically, and ended up about an inch and a half shorter than the Lab was, at a very skinny 45 pounds, then came the sideways growing, and the muscles, lots of muscles, ending up at 75 pounds, very dense, with a 27″ neck, and a mouth full of, as a couple of vets said, “Finger amputatin’ teeth”. In this pic, he’s playing with his buddy Orville, who was about 25 pounds and a real psychotic when he went to the vet. This was shortly before the dreaded “Testicle bite” incident, which traumatized Gus to the point he was terrified of Orville the rest of his life:
@Lee: “head of ranch security” – presumably you’ve had an elementary school boy in the house recently. #2 son loved the Hank the Cowdog books.
I’m a retired teacher (formerly wstarvingteacher). Simple plagiarism. If I had known how he was going to end up looking his name would have been Hank.
I am nominating this as the most adorbs CC thread of all time.
Jeeps didnt sell very well here a poor rep from WW2 and high tarriffs in Landrover country saw to that so its unlikely any Jeepsters came here new though they sure made it here used at least one did that Ive seen.
I submit my parents’ dog Cindy, my faithful companion whenever I go over to the house to tinker with my Chevy pickup or my Monza:
Always preferred these earlier Commados to my past Shick shaver faced version. But my bones hurt just looking at it. Unless the road is glass smooth, they are way too fast for their suspensions… And they aren’t fast. A governor limiting them to 30 mph would be a help.
One detail catches my eye. The way the front fender flare is cut down so there’s room for a side marker light. “Tail Wags Dog” design school (speaking of dogs).
I’m struck at how burly the pits are. Around here, they must mostly be mixes as their bodies are more lithe, like foxhounds with little walrus faces grafted on. But they still pull like Panzers.
One more thing. I live 2400 miles from you, Paul. Do you take Paypal for the rent?
Well, “pit bull” is not a specific breed, but a catch-all name for a number of breeds. The two main ones are the American Pit Bull Terrier and the Staffordshire Bull terrier. The American Pit Bull terrier is more athletic and smaller built. The Staffordshire is stockier but also not as big as our dogs.
These dogs are called “American Bully”, which is not a recognized breed, but a newish breed-wanna-be. There’s a lot of variation in their size and looks, depending on the breeder. And there obviously is some Mastiff in them; especially Lil’ Man has some decided mastiff characteristics. He’s BIG. (85-90 lbs)
“Pit Bull” is often used generically for a wide range of breeds, which is what contributes to their image problem. It’s not that easy to ID a true pit bull, and many get it wrong. When someone is bitten or attacked, it’s often called a “pit bull” even though it might be a Rottweiler or some other dog. That’s why the statistics on attacks and dog bites are often skewed, as many so-called “pits” aren’t really pit bulls.
To avoid all the Pit Bull craziness, we never told anyone that Gus was a Pit Mix, until he was about 10 days from being put down due to being loaded with cancer. We told them he was a Golden Retriever and a Bassett Hound mix. A lot of people were shocked they had been hugging and kissing, and allowing their kids (and one baby) to play with a Pit the last 14 years.
Back to the Jeep … in a small way (small given the tiny market share and hence insignificance) I’d say the shaver nose, as Barko calls it, on the later Jeepsters qualifies as a deadly sin. “Let’s get rid of an iconic front end that anyone around the world recognizes as our brand and replace it with something anonymous”.
Is it just me, or does Paul have a bit of Grand Moff Tarkin going on here???
Those are some handsome ani-mules you have there. Every pitty Ive come across has been an even tempered and friendly chowhound. But then, I dont associate with abusive types so theres that…
Killer find on the Commando. The body seems very straight and rust-free. Id take one of these in similar condition in a hot second!!!
LOL, I thought the same thing! I said to myself, “They should have looked at him to play a younger Grand Moff Tarkin” when I read it the first time. My Pit mix, the left one in the pic I posted above, was pretty much a wuss, he never wanted to fight with anybody, and only had two enemies, one was a neighbor’s yellow Lab, Logan, who attacked him when he was a puppy, and this guy named Kurt, that every dog I’ve ever seen wanted to tear apart. The yellow Lab in my pic hated Kurt with a passion too. The black dog, well, if it wasn’t a bird, she wasn’t interested, and the only reason she was interested in birds was as a handy snack. Yuck.
I have a beagle that is very nervous riding in cars. She goes everywhere with me and loves the destination but not the journey. Last year her nervous car behaviour changed dramatically. As soon as the car started moving she would curl up on the floor behind my seat and tremble all over and not come up until the car stopped. It was time to change from winter tires to the summer rubber so while I’m at it I check brakes, front end parts and whatever else while the car is up. Sure enough when I got to the rear I could just feel a roughness in the wheel bearing on the left side while the right side had about 2mm of end play. Good catch dog! With new hub assy’s the strange behaviour went away.
A few weeks ago she did it again. I knew I had a slight warp in one of my front rotors but with the thickness of the pads I was hoping to wait until the coldest part of the winter passed. The dog had other ideas. Both inner pads were past half worn and the inner face of the rotors were scored. The left side caliper had a stuck guide pin while on the right the pad was well rusted in the bracket. So much so that I had to hammer it out. It was -4C that Saturday so it was not so bad. Sunday was -12C with a windchill of -22C.
No deferred maintenance while this dog is around and no ignoring the beagle scanner either. She hears things that we can’t. No you can’t borrow her.
Back to the topic at hand I can only imagine my dog’s reaction to the rattles and squeaks that old Jeepster no doubt has.
Will we ever see the end of what a Beagle can do? Drug sniffers, bedbug sniffers… car maintenance diag”nose”rs…
My beagle is also a rescue. She was on a kill list in Ohio when a volunteer group stepped in and from there she ended up in Canada. If they have been beaten or otherwise mistreated in the past it takes a little more time and work to build a trust. It took two weeks or so for her not to fear me when I talked loudly and several months more to realize that if I pick something up I’m not going to hit her with it. She no longer fears the tv remote, bbq tongs, wrenches, screwdrivers and brooms. We are still working on the canoe paddles.
With regards to cars and dogs, my experience is that small dogs (Chihuahua, Shih Tzu, Poodle) do not like riding in cars but larger dogs love it. Our pit sticks his big head out the window to get the full effect, even in New England winter. We used to have a Golden Retriever, a Lab and a Doberman over the years and they all loved car rides.
I had a Shih Tzu and he just loved to go in the car. I would jiggle the car keys, and he would get excited. He would never sit in the back seat, but sat in the passenger side front seat, put his paws on the window sill and bark at all the big dogs he saw.
Funny! Our Shi has to be kept separate from the pit… She (tries to) bully him.
Nice Jeepster ! .
I got my Step Mother’s ’69 after it was unwanted .
I applaud you for rescuing those dogs ~ where I live most dogs are inbred pit bull mixes and dangerous to everyone , even their owners, @$$#oles that they are . you see them beating the dogs as they walk them or mindlessly yanking their chains just to keep them upset and angry .
What kind of looser hurts _dogs_ f’chrissakes ?! . I wish they’d be outlawed here as there are daily attacks every where in Southern California .
My Son has two pit mixes , the brindle Sire looks like a total ghetto killer but is quite friendly with me and other family members .
I have two little Chihuahua’s , they terrific guard dogs and yes ”
It is well established that family dogs calm the nerves and prolong the lives of their owners. ” is 1,000 % true ~ when I’m beat tired or stressed out I whistle them up and into my recliner with me and all is golden ~ we snooze happily away .
They like every other dog I’ve ever known love riding in the car/truck even though I only take them to the Vet. .
Keeping a dog in an apartment seems cruel to me ~ they need a yard to run around in .
-Nate
It is also very problematic that to preventing dogs from not to tear the car seats ot etc.