I would place the renaming to Dog and Muffler in the 1960s. It was, indeed, taken over by Mary and Edgar Hillman who were previously at the George in St Briavels (itself an excellent pub). The Dog became one of our regular watering holes on the weekends and, given its location off-the beaten track, operated fairly flexible opening hours! Two reasons for thinking it was renamed in the Sixties are: I moved away from the Forest in 1965 and had been using it before then; there was a foot and mouth outbreak in 1964 and I can recall being in the Dog late on a Sunday evening with Mary encouraging us to leave which produced a classic line from one of the group of "Dear God, we've got foot and mouth outside and mouth and foot inside". As to its name, I'd always assumed it was because many an old coal miner wore a muffler and had a dog!

Thankyou for the info.Very interesting.