The Littlest Hobo
1963—1965 and 1979—1985 Canadian television series
The Littlest Hobo (French: Le Vagabond) is a Canadian television series based upon a 1958 American film of the same name directed by Charles R. Rondeau. The series first aired from 1963 to 1965 in syndication, and was revived for a popular second run on CTV, spanning six seasons, from October 11, 1979, to March 7, 1985. The concept of the show is an ownerless dog who travels.
All three productions revolved around an extremely intelligent ownerless German Shepherd, the titular Hobo, who wanders from town to town, helping people in need. Despite the attempts of the many people whom he helped to adopt him, he heads off by himself at the end of each episode.
The dog is often referred to by the names given by his temporary human companions within the context of an individual episode, but is ultimately known only as Hobo across the context of the series as a whole. His origins, motivation, and ultimate destination are never explained in any of the shows.
1963–1965 series
The German Shepherd dogs featured in both 1960s and 1980s series were owned and trained by Chuck Eisenmann. The primary star was named London, but several of London's relatives, including Toro, Litlon, and Thorn, also played scenes as the Hobo. Eisenmann used his own training methods to work with his dogs which involved educating them to think and understand very specific directions, to recognize colours, and to understand English, German, and French.
“The Littlest Hobo” enters the record as 1963—1965 and 1979—1985 Canadian television series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Littlest, Hobo and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q102405516. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1963, 1965 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Littlest Hobo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.