Laura Comstock's bag-punching dog

Opens with the head and shoulders of a woman in full dress and hat and the front paws and head of a boxer visible behind a sign that reads "Miss Laura Comstock's Bag Punching Dog." Cuts to the dog sitting on his haunches on a stage with a painted backdrop of a trail through a forest. As the dog starts to wander offscreen, a large punching bag drops from above. He leaps up and hits the suspended bag with his head and body, causing it to swing. The dog repeatedly punches the bag in this manner until he knocks it down completely, grabs it in his mouth, and shakes it from side to side in his teeth.
"This wonderful dog "Mannie," owned by the vaudeville star, Miss Laura Comstock, is a most learned animal. He has been trained to perform all sorts of tricks, and his intelligence is, perhaps, most marked in his latest and most difficult feat, that of punching the bag. This picture depicts him in a bag punching performance which is really wonderful. His high jumps and lightning-like punches are remarkable and cause one to marvel at the amount of patience that must be necessary to teach a dog such tricks"--Edison films catalog.
H4086 U.S. Copyright Office
Copyright: Thomas A. Edison; 6May1901; H4086.
Original main title lacking.
Camera, Edwin S. Porter.
Performers: Mannie the dog, Laura Comstock.
Duration: 1:31 at 18 fps.
Edison catalog no. 5227.
Paper print shelf number (LC 1685) was changed when the paper prints were re-housed.
Additional holdings for this title may be available. Contact reference librarian.
Filmed in Edison's New York City studio, in April or May of 1901.
Available also through the Library of Congress Web site as digital files.
Sources used: Copyright catalog, motion pictures, 1894-1912; Niver, K. Early motion pictures, p. 180; AFI cat.: film beginnings, 1893-1910, 1995; Musser, C. The emergence of cinema, p. 316-17, 486; Edison films catalog, no. 105, July 1901, p. 51; Musser, C. Before the nickelodeon, p. 173.
Early motion pictures : the Paper Print Collection in the Library of Congress / by Kemp R. Niver. Library of Congress. 1985.