CHANG, MY CHOW
His first appearance--Adventures and mishaps--Companions in
Hospital--Chang goes to Church--Facing the enemy.
Among all the reminiscences of my life in Japan I think those in which
my Chinese chow dog played a part are perhaps the most vivid in my
memory.
We had some good times together, Chang and I, and I fear the chief blame
lies at his mistress’s door for not training him up in the way he should
go. But who can teach a chow what he doesn’t want to learn? A cleverer
person than I.
How well I remember Chang’s first appearance on the scene--a Sunday
afternoon in Tokio. Enter Yami, very hot and agitated, holding a
struggling yellow ball in his arms. Here was the much-longed-for chow
puppy, sent me by a friend from Hong Kong. What a queer little chap he
was, with his bright brown eyes and black tongue. Exceedingly dirty,
too, I am sorry to have to confess, in spite of several baths on his
arrival at Yokohama, to which I was told he much objected.
As Chang grew up he became the very finest chow dog seen out of China.
What high-class specimens may be reserved for the special consumption of
the yellow-jacketed and peacock-befeathered Chinese mandarin I know not,
but in the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’ he decidedly held his own.
[Illustration: THREE FRIENDS (_p._ 127).]
Which reminds me--and I have it on the best authority, that of His
Excellency Mr. Wong, late Chinese Minister in Tokio, since
beheaded--that chow dogs are _not_ eaten in China.
I had two little Japanese chins at that time--Yum-Yum and Dodo--which
ran Chang very close in my affections. What pretty little things they
were! Yum-Yum, no bigger than a fair-sized kitten, but almost human in
intelligence and powers of affection, with her pretty little bird-like
ways. I fancy even Chang’s stony heart now and then felt a pang of
jealousy when he saw her sitting on my shoulder, nibbling a bit of
lettuce, or chin-chinning to an admiring audience on the dining-room
table for a grape or wee bit of apple.
Then the fat, sturdy Dodo too, with his long, black-and-white, silky
coat and inquiring mind. I can see him now, gazing, with head on one
side, like a pert cock-robin, at that funny, immovable little policeman
outside the gates. I sometimes almost wondered myself if that small
wooden figure were really alive, or only a dummy in uniform and sword,
for surely it would have made a cat laugh to see Dodo’s never-ending
astonishment and curiosity.
One constant source of excitement in Chang’s life at Tokio were the
black crows. What games he used to play with them, feigning sleep, until
those wary thieves would venture to make a raid on a half-finished bone;
then up he would jump, and a mad chase would follow. But those wily old
birds somehow always got the best of it, and would sit, cawing away
triumphantly, in the twisted pine-tree just out of his reach.
But Chang was a great source of anxiety to me sometimes in those days,
to say nothing of expense. Only the other evening, looking over some old
papers, I came across the following bill, for which he is responsible:
BILL FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT OF THE CHOW DOG.
Consultation 1 yen.
Examination 75 sen.
Operation 2 yen 25 sen.
Lodging, milk-and-egg diet for 4 yen 50 sen.
above-named animal during one month
‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒
Total 8 yen 50 sen.[D]
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗
_First-class Veterinary Institution,_
_Komobar, Tokio._
-----
Footnote D:
Equals about 17s. 6d.
-----
[Illustration: THE GARDEN OF THE LITTLE TEA-HOUSE (_p._ 131).]
Ah! had it not been for the kind care and skill of those clever little
Japs, he would not now be basking in luxury by the fire.
One day I found him lying, to all appearance, dead under the pink
camellia-bush in the garden of that little tea-house far away from Tokio
in the interior where we were staying. What could be the matter?
‘Poison, evidently,’ suggested one would-be comforter. Had he not barked
at that melancholy-looking individual, who had apparently come to this
far-off, secluded spot, in search of quiet and repose? No wonder, then,
a foreigner’s dog--and such a dog--should be quietly, but surely,
condemned!
I was in despair. What was to be done?
‘Consult a city magistrate?’ There was no city, and certainly no
magistrate.
‘The village doctor’--brilliant suggestion from our faithful
interpreter, Idaka. A rickshaw was summoned, and with many injunctions
and--let me confess--a few tears, the poor, unconscious treasure was
sent off in Yami’s watchful charge.
Three hours’ waiting, whilst a long line of patient and sick little
Japanese went up for consultation to the kind old ‘isha-san’ (doctor),
who lived in the little wooden house at the end of the narrow street,
with the big tiger-lily before the door. There he sat upon his mat on
the floor, clad in his blue kimono, with spectacles and pipe, waiting to
receive his patients, with a little brass hibatchi burning away beside
him.
Chang’s pulse and tongue having been both examined, Yami was given a
small cardboard box containing six minute pills.
‘One every two hours until the patient is better.’ By mistake the pills
all falling into his bread-and-milk, were swallowed in one dose, but
fortunately no fatal result ensued.
The next day we returned to Tokio. How were we to dispose of the poor
suffering one during the four hours’ rickshaw drive? Finally Chang was
rolled up in a rug at my feet and all went well for the first twelve
miles or so, when our rickshaw coolie in the shafts took it into his
head to bolt down a steep hill. Result, a smash--a confused heap of
mistress and dog on the ground, a broken-kneed coolie, to say nothing of
the telescoping of the other rickshaws in the rear, which, not being
able to stop in their downward course, were literally jammed together,
the shafts of one going straight through the back of the one in front.
Stiff and shaken as I was, I have seldom laughed more than at the sight
the unfortunate occupants presented in their original prison. However,
after some difficulty, at last we arrived home, and the next day Chang
was sent off to that most excellent Japanese institution, the Komobar,
where, after a month’s residence and the previously mentioned bill, he
returned home convalescent, not, however, in his former unblemished
condition. Having had inflammation of both lungs, it was thought
necessary to blister his sides, and the absence of hair was replaced by
a blue linen wadded coat, tied on with tape, and with two holes for the
front-legs.
[Illustration: THE KIND OLD ‘ISHA-SAN’ (_p._ 131).]
Poor Chang, how he hated being the laughing-stock of those odious curs
in the neighbourhood. But we tried our best to console him by making him
a coat of yellow iron-cloth, which we likened to the late Li Hung
Chang’s renowned yellow jacket.
Chang’s little friends, the Japanese spaniels, were also his companions
in hospital. Strange to say, about this time Dodo caught small-pox, or
what Dr. Hitchikito pronounced to be such, and was promptly bundled off
to the hospital for a three-weeks’ residence in a large wicker cage,
with strict quarantine, whence he returned somewhat thinner, but just as
pompous as ever.
Little Yum-Yum’s illness was of a different nature. During our absence
from Tokio she pined to such an extent that her little brain could no
longer stand the strain, and she developed brain-fever. We received one
morning a frantic telegram from the cook to say ‘Yum-Yum seriously ill;
under treatment.’ On our return, we found the patient better, looking
very interesting, lying in a small brown basket before the kitchen fire.
She had sufficient strength to give a weak little bark of joy, and
feebly lick our hands with her tiny red tongue. We were told she had
literally been packed in ice to reduce the fever, until her silken coat
stood out stiff and straight like frozen snow.
They are clever men those Japanese veterinaries. Where else in the world
would an animal have been treated in that scientific and up-to-date
fashion?
I think there were moments when Chang must have been possessed of an
evil spirit, otherwise what can have put it into his disobedient head to
follow me to church one Sunday morning, in spite of strict orders to
remain at home?
After he had been three times removed from the aisle by the irate
churchwarden, I was at last obliged to escort him myself to what I
thought was a safe distance, and, leaving him trotting sadly away up the
little path towards the house, I returned to church and my devotions
quite happy in my mind.
All went well until the sermon. The curate was just going up into the
pulpit when I saw him suddenly start back, very nearly falling over as
he did so, and then beckon to one of the choir-boys. An animated
discussion followed, then the boy, looking somewhat pale, mounted the
steps, dived down into the pulpit, and, to my horror, I saw Chang being
dragged out, much against his will, looking extremely cross, but
otherwise perfectly regardless of the commotion he was causing.
When he had been safely marched out through the vestry, and the door
firmly closed, the service was resumed, but I noticed that the sermon
was somewhat dogmatic that morning. A thousand pardons!
[Illustration: THE LITTLE HOUSE IN THE FOREST (_p._ 139).]
On investigation, I discovered that Chang, as soon as my back was
turned, had followed me quietly at some little distance, and, entering
the church unperceived by the vestry door, decided to take his morning
nap on the pulpit mat until it should be time to escort me home.
The next morning I received a polite note from the curate asking me
kindly to abstain in future from bringing my dog to church, as, although
he admired him immensely, he thought a dog a somewhat disturbing element
on such occasions. In future, on Sunday mornings, before our departure
to church, the offender was firmly secured to the leg of the kitchen
table, and we had no more startling apparitions to distract us.
I think life would have been quite ideal in our summer quarters at
Karuizawa had it not been for that odious black chow that lived in the
other little house in the forest, just across the stream down below.
He was not to be compared to Chang in beauty, and, I must confess, in a
tooth-to-tooth fight, Chang invariably got the worst of it. After a
daily encounter on neutral grounds, affairs reached a crisis when, one
day, in a fit of bravado, my hero ventured into the enemy’s camp, and a
terrific and sanguinary battle followed. In one last, desperate
struggle, they fell together into the gold-fish pond, and were only
rescued from a watery grave by the gallant exertions of the black chow’s
master, who dragged them out dripping, half dead, but still locked in a
deadly embrace, only to be loosened by the repeated application of
buckets of water and finally pepper on their respective noses.
The appearance of my friend for the next few days resembled that of a
victim to mumps, combined with a black and swollen eye and a somewhat
mangy condition of his naturally glossy coat.
Even that, alas! did not cure Chang’s pugilistic tendencies. How often
has he returned home a sadder, though I fear not a wiser, dog! On one
occasion with but three sound legs; on another, with a hole the size of
a bullet-wound in his throat from a mastiff’s fang. But enough of these
painful reflections.
[Illustration: CHANG’S FIRST APPEARANCE.]