Kōrero: Ball, Murray Hone

Finn and the Dog

Murray Ball seated on a grassy bank beside a black and white border collie dog.

The Dog, like most of Ball’s ‘Footrot Flats’ characters, was drawn from a variety of real-world exemplars along with aspects of Ball’s own personality. Ball initially based the Dog on Jumble, a fox terrier he had as a child, but as time went on he increasingly based Dog on Finn, a border collie he acquired in the early 1980s to help on the farm. Ball recalled in 1998, shortly after Finn’s death: ‘I gave Dog Finn’s courage and his “discretion”, his intelligence, his innocence, his honesty, his sneakiness, his loyalty and his weaknesses (when there was a scent of mutton or bitch in the air). But above all I gave him love. The Dog loved.’ (Dominion, 8 October 1998)

Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PAColl-7327-1-155

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

Me pēnei te tohu i te whārangi:

Tim Shoebridge. 'Ball, Murray Hone', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 2022. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/mi/biographies/6b14/ball-murray-hone (accessed 29 March 2024)