Here, at “Sunnybank,”--at Pompton Lakes, in New Jersey,--we raise
thoroughbred collies. For many years we have been breeding them. For
many years longer, I have been studying them.
The more I study them, the more I realise that there is something
about a collie--a mysterious, elusive something--that makes him
different from any other dog. Something nearer human than beast. And,
for all that, he is one hundred per cent dog.
There is much to learn from him; much to puzzle over; as perhaps the
following discursive yarns about a few members of the long line of
Sunnybank collies may show.
Greatest of them all was Lad. One would as soon have thought of
teaching nursery rhymes to Emerson as of teaching Lad “tricks.” Beyond
the common babyhood lessons of obedience and of the Place’s simple
Law, he went untaught. And he taught himself; being that type of dog.
For example:--
The Mistress had been dangerously ill, with pneumonia. (In my book,
_Lad: A Dog_, I tell how Laddie kept vigil outside her door, day and
night, until she was out of danger; and how he celebrated her
convalescence with a brainstorm which would have disgraced a
three-months puppy.) Well, on the first day she was able to be carried
out of doors, the Mistress lay in a veranda hammock, with Lad on the
porch floor at her side.
Friends--several instalments of them--drove to the Place to
congratulate the Mistress on her recovery; and to bring gifts of
flowers, fruit, jellies, books. All morning, Lad lay there, watching
the various relays of guests and eyeing the presents they laid in her
lap. After the fifth group of callers had gone, the big collie got up
and trotted off into the forest. For nearly an hour he was absent.
Then he came back; travelling with difficulty, by reason of the heavy
burden he bore. Somewhere, far away in the woods, he had found, or
revisited, the carcase of a dead horse--of an excessively dead horse.
From it he had wrenched two ribs and some of the vertebræ.
Dragging this horrible gift along, he returned to the veranda. Before
any of us were well aware of his presence (the wind setting in the
other direction) he had mounted the steps and, with one mighty heave,
had lifted the ribs and vertebræ over the hammock edge and laid them
in the lap of his dismayed Mistress.
Humans had celebrated her recovery with presents. And he, watching,
had imitated them. He had gone far and had toiled hard to bring her an
offering that his canine mind deemed all-desirable.
It was carrion; but it represented, to a dog, everything that a
present should be.
Dogs do not eat carrion. They merely rub their shoulders in it; on the
same principle that women use perfumes. It is a purely æsthetic
pleasure to them. And carrion is probably no more malodorous to a
human being than is the reek of tobacco or of whisky or even of some
$15-an-ounce scent, to a dog. It is all a matter of taste and of
education.
Noting that his gift awoke no joy whatever in its recipient’s heart,
Lad was monstrous crestfallen. Nor, from that day on, did he ever
bring carrion to the Place. He even abstained henceforth from rubbing
his shoulders in it. Evidently he gathered, from our reception of his
present, that “it is not done.”
When Lad was training his little son, Wolf, to become a decent canine
citizen, he was much annoyed by the puppy’s trick of watching his sire
bury bones and then of exhuming and gnawing them himself. Lad did not
punish the puppy for this. He adopted a shrewder and surer way of
saving his buried treasures from theft.
Thereafter, he would bury the choice bone deeper in the ground than
had been his habit. And, directly above it, just below the surface of
the earth, he would inter a second and older bone; a bone that had
long been denuded of all meat and was of no further value to any dog.
Wolf, galloping eagerly up to the spot of burial, as soon as Lad moved
away, would dig where his father had dug. Presently, he would unearth
the topmost and worthless bone. Satisfied that he had exhausted the
possibilities of the cache, he dug no deeper; but left the new and
toothsome bone undiscovered.
By the way, did it ever occur to you that a dog is almost the only
animal to bury food? And did you ever stop to think why? The reason is
simple.
Dogs, alone of all wild animals (dogs and their blood-brethren, the
wolves), used to hunt in packs. All other beasts hunted alone or, at
most, in pairs. When prey was slain, the dog that did not bolt his
food with all possible haste was the dog that got the smallest share
or none at all. When there was more food than could be devoured at one
meal, he had the sense to lay up provision for the next day’s dinner.
He knew, if he left the carcase lying where it was, it would be
devoured by the rest of the hungry pack. So he buried as much of it as
he could, to prevent his brethren from finding and eating it.
Thus, the dog, alone of all quadrupeds, still bolts his food in huge
and half-chewed mouthfuls; and the dog buries food for future use.
These two traits are as purely ancestral as is the dog’s habit of
turning around several times before settling himself to sleep for the
night. His wild ancestors did that, to crush the stiff grasses and
reeds into a softer bed and to scare therefrom any lurking snakes or
scorpions.
Lad’s “talking” was a byword, at Sunnybank. Only to the Mistress and
myself would he deign to “speak.” But, to us, he would sometimes talk
for five minutes at a time. Of course, there were no actual words in
his speech. But no words were needed to show his meaning.
His conversation used to run the full gamut of sounds, in a way that
was as eerie as it was laughable. He could--and did--express every
shade of meaning he chose to.
Indignation or disgust was voiced in fierce grumbles and mutters, that
were run together in sentence lengths. Sympathy found vent in queer
crooning sounds, accompanied by swift light pats of his absurdly tiny
white forepaws. Grief was expressed in something too much like human
sobs to be funny. And so on through every possible emotion,--except
fear. The great dog did not know fear.
No one, listening when Lad “talked,” could doubt he was seeking to
imitate the intonation and meanings of the human voice.
Once, the Mistress and I went on a visit of sympathy to a lugubrious
old woman who lived some miles from Sunnybank, and who had been laid
up for weeks with a broken arm. The arm had mended. But it was still a
source of mental misery to the victim. We took Lad along, on our call,
because the convalescent was fond of him. We had every cause, soon, to
wish we had left him at home.
From the instant we entered the old woman’s house, a demon of evil
mirth seemed to possess the dog. Outwardly, he was calm and sedate, as
usual. He curled up beside the Mistress, and, with head gravely on one
side, proceeded to listen to our hostess’ tale of the long and painful
illness. But, scarcely had the whiningly groaning accents framed a
single sentence of the recital, when Lad took up the woful tale on his
own account.
His voice pitched in precisely the same key as the speaker’s, he began
to whine and to mumble. When the woman paused for breath, Lad filled
in the brief interval with the most heartrendingly lamentable groans;
then continued his plaint with her. And all the time, his deep-set,
sorrowful eyes were fairly a-dance with mischief, and the tip of his
plumy tail was quivering in a tense effort not to betray his sinful
glee by wagging.
It was too much for me. I got out of the room as fast as I could. I
escaped barely in time to hear the hostess moan:
“Isn’t it wonderful how that dog understands my terrible suffering? He
carries on, just as if it were his own agony!”
But I knew better, in spite of Lad’s affirmative groan. In personal
agony, Lad could never be lured into making a sound. And when the
Mistress or myself was unhappy, his swift and heart-broken sympathy
did not take the form of lamentable ululations or of such impudent
copying of our voices.
It was just one of Lad’s jokes. He realised as well as we did that the
old lady was no longer in pain and that she was a chronic calamity
howler. That was his way of guying the mock-sufferer. Genuine trouble
always stirred him to the depths. But, his life long, he hated fraud.
Lad’s story is told in detail, elsewhere; and I have here written
overlong about him. But his human traits were myriad and it is hard
for me to condense an account of him.
Then there was Bruce,--hero of my dogbook of the same name. Bruce’s
“pedigree name” was Sunnybank Goldsmith; and for many years he brought
local dog-show fame to the Place by an unbroken succession of
victories. A score of cups and medals and an armful of blue ribbons
attest his physical perfection.
But dog-shows take no heed of a collie’s mentality, nor of the
thousand wistfully lovable traits which make him what he is. When we
carved on Bruce’s headstone the inscription, “_The Dog Without a
Fault_,” we referred less to his physical magnificence than to the
soul and the heart of him.
He was wholly different from Lad. He lacked Lad’s d’Artagnan-like dash
and gaiety and uncanny wisdom. Yet he was clever. And he had a strange
sweetness of nature that I have found in no other dog. That, and a
perfect “one-man-dog” obedience and goodness.
Like Lad, he was never struck or otherwise punished; and never needed
such punishment. He and Laddie were dear friends, from the moment they
met. And each was the only grown male dog with which the other would
consent to be on terms of cordiality.
Bruce had a melancholy dignity, behind which lurked an elusive sense
of fun.
For his children--he had many dozens of them--he felt an eternal
disgust; even aversion. Let visitors start to walk towards the
puppy-yards, and Bruce at once lowered his head and tail and slunk
away. When a group of the puppies, out for a gallop, caught sight of
their sire and bore down gleefully upon him, Bruce would stalk off in
utter gloom. Too chivalric to hurt or even to growl at any of the
scrambling oncoming babies, he would none the less take himself out of
their way with all possible haste.
But, on occasion, he could rise to a sense of his duties as a parent.
As when one of the young dogs was left tied for a few minutes to a
clothesline, three summers ago. The youngster gnawed the line in two
and pranced merrily away on a rabbit hunt, dragging ten feet of rope
with him.
When I came home and saw the severed clothesline, I knew what must be
happening, somewhere out in the woods. The dangling rope was certain
to catch in some bush or stump. And the puppy, in his struggles, would
snarl himself inextricably. There, unless help should come, he must
starve to death.
For twenty-four hours, two of the men and the Mistress and myself
scoured the forests and hills for a radius of several miles. We looked
everywhere a luckless puppy would be likely to entangle himself. We
shouted ourselves hoarse, in hope of an answering cry from the lost
one.
After a day and a night of this fruitless search, the Mistress and I
set off again; this time taking Bruce along. At least, we started off
taking him. After the first hundred yards, he took us. Why I bothered
to follow him, I don’t yet know.
He struck a bee line, through woods and brambles, travelling at a hard
gallop and stopping every few moments for me to catch up with him. At
the end of a mile, he plunged into a copse that was choked with
briars. In the centre of this he gave tongue, with a salvo of
thunderous barks. Twice before, I had searched this copse. But, at his
urgency, I entered it again.
In its exact centre, hidden from view by a matted screen of briars and
leaves, I found the runaway. His rope had caught in a root. He had
then wound himself up in it, until the line enmeshed him and held him
close to earth. A twist of it, around his jaws, had kept him from
making a sound. He was half dead from fright and thirst.
Having found and saved the younger dog, Bruce promptly lost all
interest in him. He seemed ashamed, rather than pleased, at our
laudations.
On such few times as we went motoring without him, Bruce was always on
hand to greet us on our return. And his greeting took an odd form.
Near the foot of the drive was a big Forsythia bush. At sight of the
approaching car, Bruce invariably rushed over to this bush and hid
behind it. At least he bent his head until a branch of the bush hid it
from view.
Then, tail a-quiver, he would crouch there; not realising that all of
him except his head was in plain sight to us. When at last the car was
almost alongside, he would jump out; and stand wagging his plumed tail
excitedly, to note our surprise at his unforeseen presence. Never did
this jest pall on him. Never did he have the faintest idea that his
head was the only part of his beautiful self which was not clearly
visible.
Bruce slept in my bedroom. In the morning, when one of the maids
knocked at the door to wake me, he would get to his feet, cross the
room to the bed, and lay his cold muzzle against my face, tapping at
my arm or shoulder with his paw until I opened my eyes. Then, at once,
he went back to his rug and lay down again. Nor, if I failed to climb
out of bed for another two hours, would he disturb me a second time.
He had waked me, once. After that, it was up to me to obey the summons
or to disregard it. That was no concern of Bruce’s. His duty was done!
But how did a mere dog know that the knock on the door was a signal
for me to get up? Never by any chance did he disturb me until he
heard that knock.
He was psychic, too. Rex, a dog that I had had long before, used to
sleep in a certain corner of the lower hall. He slept there for years.
He was killed. Never afterward would Bruce set foot on the spot where
Rex had been wont to lie. Time and again I have seen him skirt that
part of the floor, making a semi-circular detour in order to avoid
stepping there. I have tested him a dozen times, in the presence of
guests. Always the result was the same.
Peace to his stately, lovable, whimsical soul! He was my dear chum.
And his going has left an ache.
Wolf is Lad’s son--wiry and undersized; yet he is as golden as
Katherine Lee Bates’ immortal “Sigurd.” He inherits his sire’s
wonderful brain as well as Laddie’s keen sense of humour.
Savage, and hating strangers, Wolf has learned the law to this extent:
no one, walking or motoring down the drive from the gate and coming
straight to the front door, must be molested; though no stranger
crossing the grounds or prowling within their limits need be
tolerated.
A guest may pat him on the head, at will; and Wolf must make no sign
of resentment. But all my years of training do not prevent him from
snarling in fierce menace if a visitor seeks to pat his sensitive
body. Very young children are the only exceptions to this rule of his.
Toddling babies may maul him to their hearts’ content; and Wolf revels
in the discomfort.
Like Lad, he is the Mistress’ dog. Not merely because he belongs to
her; but because he has adopted her for his deity.
When we leave Sunnybank, for two or three months, yearly, in
midwinter, Wolf knows we are going; even before the trunks are brought
from the attic for packing. And, from that time on, he is in dire,
silent misery. When at last the car carries us out of the gate, he
sits down, points his muzzle skyward, and shakes the air with a series
of raucous wolf-howls. After five minutes of which, he sullenly,
stoically, takes up the burden of loneliness until our return.
The queer part of it is that he knows--as Lad and Bruce used to
know--in some occult way, when we are coming home. And, for hours
before our return, he is in a state of crazy excitement. I don’t try
to explain this. I have no explanation for it. But it can be proven by
anyone at Sunnybank.
The ancestral herding instinct is strong in Wolf. It made itself
known, first, when a car was coming down the drive towards the house,
at a somewhat reckless pace, several years ago. In the centre of the
drive, several of the collie pups were playing. When the car was
almost on top of the heedless bevy of youngsters, Wolf darted out,
from the veranda, rushed in among the pups and shouldered them off the
drive and up onto the bank at either side. He cleared the drive of
every one of them; then bounded aside barely in time to escape the
car’s front wheels.
He was praised for this bit of quick thought and quicker action. And
the praise made him inordinately proud. From that day on, he has
hustled every pup or grown dog off the drive, whenever a car has come
in sight through the gateway.
When the pups are too far scattered for him to round them up and shove
them out of harm’s way, in so short a time, he adopts a still better
mode of clearing the drive. Barking in wild ecstasy, he rushes at top
speed down the lawn, as though in pursuit of some highly alluring
prey. No living pup can resist such a call. Every one of the
youngsters dashes in pursuit. Then, as soon as the last of them is far
enough away from the drive, Wolf stops and comes trotting back to the
house. He has done this, again and again. To me, it savours of human
reasoning.
In the car, Wolf is as efficient a guard as any policeman. When the
Mistress drives alone, he sits on the front seat beside her. If she
stops in front of any shop, he is at once on the alert. At such
times, a woman acquaintance may come alongside for a word with her.
Wolf pays no heed to the newcomer.
But let a _man_ approach the car; and Wolf is up on his toes, and
ready for trouble. If the man lays a hand on the automobile, in the
course of the chat, Wolf is at his throat. When I am driving with the
Mistress, he lies on the rear seat and does not bother to act as
policeman; except when we leave the car in his keeping.
People, hereabouts, know this trait of Wolf’s and his aversion to any
stranger. And they forbear to touch the car when talking with us. Last
year, a friend came alongside, while we were waiting, one evening, for
the mail to be sorted. Wolf had never before seen this man. Yet, after
a single glance, the dog lost his usual air of hostility. There was a
slight tremble in our friend’s voice as he said to us:
“My collie was run over to-day and killed. We are mighty unhappy, at
our house, this evening.”
As he spoke, he laid his hand on the door of the car. Wolf lurched
forward, as usual. But, to our amazement, instead of attacking, he
whimpered softly and licked the man’s face. Never before or since,
have I seen him show any sign of friendly interest in a stranger--not
even to this same man, when they chanced to meet again, a few months
later.
Bruce’s son, Jock, was the finest pup, from a dog-show point of
view--and in every other way--that we have been able to breed. Jock
was physical perfection. And he had a brain, too; and abundant charm;
and a most intensely haunting personality. He had from earliest
puppyhood, all the steadfast qualities of a veteran dog; and at the
same time a babylike friendliness and love of play.
Nor did he know what it was to be afraid. Always, in presence of
danger, he met the menace with a furious charge, accompanied by a
clear, trumpet-bark of gay defiance. Once, for instance, he had been
lying beside my chair on the veranda. Suddenly he jumped to his feet,
with that same gay, fierce bark.
I turned to see what had excited him. A huge copperhead snake had
crawled up the vines to the porch floor and had wriggled on; to within
a foot or two of my chair.
Jock was barely six months old. Yet he flew to the assault with more
sense than would many a grown dog.
All dogs have a horror of copperheads, and Jock was no exception. By
instinct, he seemed to know what the snake’s tactics would be. For he
strove to catch the foe by the back of the neck, before the copperhead
could coil.
He was a fraction of a second too late. Yet he was nimble and wise
enough to spring back out of reach, before the coiling serpent could
strike. Then, with that same glad bark of defiance, he danced about
his enemy, trying to take the snake from the rear and to flash in and
get a neck grip before the copperhead could recoil after each futile
strike.
I put an end to the battle by a bullet in the snake’s ugly head. And
Jock was mortally offended with me, for hours thereafter, for spoiling
his fun.
When he was eight months old, I took the little chap to Paterson, to
his first (and last) dog show. Never before had he been off the Place
or in a house. Yet he bore himself like a seasoned traveller; and he
“showed” with the perfection of a champion. He won, in class after
class; annexing two silver cups and several blue ribbons. His peerless
sire, Bruce, was the only collie, in the whole show, able to win over
him, that day.
Jock beat every other contestant. He seemed to enjoy showing and to
delight in the novelty and excitement of it all. He was at the show
for only a few hours; and it was a triumph-day for him.
Yet cheerfully would I give a thousand dollars not to have taken him
there.
For he brought home not only his many prizes but a virulent case of
distemper; as did other dogs that attended the same show.
Of course, I had had him (as well as all my other dogs) inoculated
against distemper, long before; and such precautions are supposed to
be effective. But the disease got through the inoculation and infected
him.
He made a gallant fight of it--oh, a _gallant_ fight!--the fearless
little thoroughbred! But it was too much for him. For five weeks, he
and I fought that grindingly losing battle.
Then, in the dim grey of a November dawn, he lifted his head from my
knee, and peered through the shadows towards one black corner of the
room. No one, watching him, could have doubted that he saw
Something--lurking there in the dark.
Sharply, he eyed the dim room-corner for an instant. Then, from his
throat burst forth that glad, fierce defiance-bark of his--his
fearlessly gay battle shout. And he fell back dead.
What did he see, waiting for him, there in the murk of shadows?
Perhaps nothing. Perhaps “the Arch-Fear in visible shape.” Who knows?
In any case, whatever it was, he did not fear it. He challenged it as
fiercely as ever he had challenged mortal foe. And his hero-spirit
went forth to do battle with it--unafraid.
God grant us all so gallant an ending!
His little mother, Sunnybank Jean, had never cast Jock off, as do most
dog-mothers when their pups are weaned. To the day I quarantined him
for distemper, she and her son had been inseparable.
A week after Jock’s death, Jean came running up to me, shaking with
glad eagerness, and led me to the grave where the puppy had been
buried. It was far off, and I had hoped she would not be able to find
it. But she had been searching, very patiently, whenever she was free.
And now, when she had led me to the grave, she lay down close beside
it. Not despondently; but wagging her plumed tail gently, and as if
she had found at last a clue in her long search. Scent or some other
sense told her she was nearer her baby than she had been in days. And
she was well content to wait there until he should come back.
All of which is maudlin, perhaps; but it is true.
Perhaps it is also maudlin to wonder why a sane human should be fool
enough to let himself care for a dog, when he knows that at best he is
due for a man’s size heartache within a pitifully brief span of years.
Dogs live so short a time; and we humans so long!
This rambling tale of my dogs leaves no room to tell at length of the
collie who was never allowed in the dining-room until the after-dinner
coffee was served; and who came the length of the hall and up to the
table the moment the maid brought in the coffee cups (how he timed it
to the very second, none of us knew; yet not once did he miss
connections by the slightest fraction of a minute).
Nor does it permit the tale of the collie pup who was proud of his
stunt in learning to take the morning paper off the front steps and
carry it into the dining-room; and whose pride in the accomplishment
led him presently to collect all the morning papers from all the door
steps within the radius of a mile and deposit them happily at my feet.
Nor can I tell of the collie that caught and followed the trail of my
footsteps, through the rain, along a crowded city street; in and out
of a maze of turnings; and came up with me inside of three minutes.
Nor of a long line of other collies, some of whom showed human
intelligence; and some, intelligence that was almost more than human.
Not even of the clown pup that was so elated over “rounding up” his
first bunch of sheep that he proceeded to round up chickens and cats
and every living and round-up-able creature that he could find; nor
of the collie who, taught to fetch my hat, was wont to romp up to me
in the presence of many outsiders; bearing proudly in his teeth an
assortment of humble, not to say intimate and humiliating, garments.
* * * * *
Comedian dogs, spectacular dogs, gloriously human dogs, Sunnybank
collies of every phase of heart and brain and soul--one common and
pathetically early tragedy has waited or waits for you all! Among you,
you have taught me more of true loyalty and patience and courtesy and
divine forgiveness and solid sanity and fun and a hundred other
worth-while lessons, than all the masters I have studied under.
* * * * *
I wonder if it is heretical to believe that when at last my tired feet
shall tread the Other Shore, a madly welcoming swirl of exultant
collies--the splendid Sunnybank dogs that have been my chums
here--will bound forward, circling and barking around me, to lead me
Home!
Heretical or otherwise, I want to believe it. And if I fail to find
them there, I shall know I have taken the Wrong Turning and have
reached a goal other than I hoped for.