COLLEGE STATION - By all accounts, including the eulogists', Reveille VIII, a Rough Collie from a Topeka, Kan., breeder, was a princess of a pup. Laid-back. Good with strangers. Not at all like Rev II, fitted with a muzzle in '58 after she nipped an official. Which was understandable, but she got a TCU assistant, too. And then there was Rev VII, suspended from game duty temporarily in 2007 after she bit the hand of one of her own.
Nothing much ruffled Rev VIII in the performance of her duties, according to Ryan Kreider, Class of '17. Not even when Kreider threw what Texas A&M president Michael Young called "the greatest block in A&M history" to protect "The First Lady of Aggieland" from an out-of-control SMU receiver.