Lassie Come-Home is a novel written by Eric Knight about a rough collie's trek over many miles to be reunited with the boy she loves.

[1] Knight had introduced the reading public to the canine character of Lassie in a magazine story published on 17 December 1938, in The Saturday Evening Post, a story which he later expanded to the novel and published in 1940 to critical and commercial success.

In 1943, the novel was adapted to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature film Lassie Come Home starring Roddy McDowall as the boy Joe Carraclough, Pal as Lassie, and featuring Elizabeth Taylor.

[3] In another part of the book, Hynes, a cynical character who oversees the Duke of Rudling's animals, falsely accuses the Carraclough family of training such dogs for fraud: "I know all about yer and yer come-home dogs.

Training 'em to break loose and run right back 'ome when they're sold, so then ye can sell 'em to someone else.