"A most extraordinary circumstance has just occurred at the Hawick
toll-bar, which is kept by two old women. It appears that they had a
sum of money in the house, and were extremely alarmed lest they should
be robbed of it. Their fears prevailed to such an extent, that, when a
carrier whom they knew was passing by, they urgently requested him to
remain with them all night, which, however, his duties would not
permit him to do; but, in consideration of the alarm of the women, he
consented to leave with them a large mastiff dog. In the night the
women were disturbed by the uneasiness of the dog, and heard a noise
apparently like an attempt to force an entrance into the premises,
upon which they escaped by the back-door, and ran to a neighbouring
house, which happened to be a blacksmith's shop. They knocked at the
door, and were answered from within by the smith's wife. She said her
husband was absent, but that she was willing to accompany the
terrified women to their home. On reaching the house, they heard a
savage but half-stifled growling from the dog. On entering they saw
the body of a man hanging half in and half out of their little window,
whom the dog had seized by the throat, and was still worrying. On
examination, the man proved to be their neighbour the blacksmith,
dreadfully torn about the throat, and quite dead."
A dog, belonging to the late Dr. Robert Hooper, had been in the
constant habit of performing various little personal services for his
master, such as fetching his slippers, &c. It happened one day that
Dr. Hooper had been detained by his professional duties much beyond
his usual dinner hour. The dog impatiently waited for his arrival, and
he at last returned, weary and hungry. After showing his pleasure at
the arrival of his master, greeting him with his usual attention, the
animal remained tolerably quiet until he conceived a reasonable time
had elapsed for the preparation of the Doctor's dinner. As it did not,
however, make its appearance, the dog went into the kitchen, seized
with his mouth a half-broiled beefsteak, with which he hastened back
to his master, placing it on the table-cloth before him.
A few years ago, the public were amused with an account given in the
newspapers of a dog which possessed the strange fancy of attending all
the fires that occurred in the metropolis. The discovery of this
predilection was made by a gentleman residing a few miles from town,
who was called up in the middle of the night by the intelligence that
the premises adjoining his house of business were on fire. "The
removal of my books and papers," said he, in telling the story, "of
course claimed my attention; yet, notwithstanding this, and the bustle
which prevailed, my eye every now and then rested on a dog, which,
during the hottest progress of the conflagration, I could not help
noticing running about, and apparently taking a deep interest in what
was going on; contriving to keep himself out of everybody's way, and
yet always present amidst the thickest of the stir. When the fire was
got under, and I had leisure to look about me, I again observed the
dog, which, with the firemen, appeared to be resting from the fatigues
of duty, and was led to make some inquiries respecting him. 'Is this
your dog, my friend?' said I to a fireman. 'No, sir,' answered he; it
does not belong to me, or to any one in particular. We call him the
firemen's dog.' 'The firemen's dog!' I replied. 'Why so? Has he no
master?' 'No, sir,' rejoined the fireman; 'he calls none of us master,
though we are all of us willing enough to give him a night's lodging
and a pennyworth of meat. But he won't stay long with any of us. His
delight is to be at all the fires in London; and, far or near, we
generally find him on the road as we are going along, and sometimes,
if it is out of town, we give him a lift. I don't think there has been
a fire for these two or three years past which he has not been at.'
"The communication was so extraordinary, that I found it difficult to
believe the story, until it was confirmed by the concurrent testimony
of several other firemen. None of them, however, were able to give any
account of the early habits of the dog, or to offer any explanation of
the circumstances which led to this singular propensity.
"Some time afterwards, I was again called up in the night to a fire in
the village in which I resided (Camberwell, in Surrey), and to my
surprise here I again met with 'the firemen's dog,' still alive and
well, pursuing, with the same apparent interest and satisfaction, the
exhibition of that which seldom fails to bring with it disaster and
misfortune, oftentimes loss of life and ruin. Still, he called no man
master, disdained to receive bed or board from the same hand more than
a night or two at a time, nor could the firemen trace out his
resting-place."
Such was the account of this interesting animal as it appeared in the
newspapers, to which were shortly afterwards appended several
circumstances communicated by a fireman at one of the police offices.
A magistrate having asked him whether it was a fact that the dog was
present at most of the fires that occurred in the metropolis, the
fireman replied that he never knew "Tyke," as he was called, to be
absent from a fire upon any occasion that he (the fireman) attended
himself. The magistrate said the dog must have an extraordinary
predilection for fires. He then asked what length of time he had been
known to possess that propensity. The fireman replied that he knew
Tyke for the last nine years; and although he was getting old, yet the
moment the engines were about, Tyke was to be seen as active as ever,
running off in the direction of the fire. The magistrate inquired
whether the dog lived with any particular fireman. The fireman replied
that Tyke liked one fireman as well as another; he had no particular
favourites, but passed his time amongst them, sometimes going to the
house of one, and then to another, and off to a third when he was
tired. Day or night, it was all the same to him; if a fire broke out,
there he was in the midst of the bustle, running from one engine to
another, anxiously looking after the firemen; and, although pressed
upon by crowds, yet, from his dexterity, he always escaped accidents,
only now and then getting a ducking from the engines, which he rather
liked than otherwise. The magistrate said that Tyke was a most
extraordinary animal; and having expressed a wish to see him, he was
shortly after exhibited at the office, and some other peculiarities
respecting him were related. There was nothing at all particular in
the appearance of the dog; he was a rough-looking small animal, of the
terrier breed, and seemed to be in excellent condition, no doubt from
the care taken of him by the firemen belonging to the different
companies. There was some difficulty experienced in bringing him to
the office, as he did not much relish going any distance from where
the firemen are usually to be found, except in cases of attending with
them at a conflagration, and then distance was of no consequence. It
was found necessary to use stratagem for the purpose. A fireman
commenced running. Tyke, accustomed to follow upon such occasions, set
out after him; but this person, having slackened his pace on the way,
the sagacious animal, knowing there was no fire, turned back, and it
was necessary to carry him to the office.
The following striking anecdote, of a similar kind, appeared in the
first number of the new issue of Cassell's "Illustrated Family
Paper." After giving a short account of a fire-escape man, named
Samuel Wood, the writer thus alludes to his dog Bill:--
"As to Bill, he regards him evidently in the light of a friend; he had
him when he was a pup from a poor fellow who died in the service, and
he and his 'Bill' have been on excellent terms ever since.
"The fire-escape man's dog takes after his master in courage and
perseverance. He is of the terrier breed, six years old. An alarm of
fire calls forth all his energy. He is the first to know that
something is wrong--the first to exert himself in setting it right. He
has not been trained to the work--'it is a gift,' as his master says;
and if we all used our gifts as efficiently as the dog Bill, it would
be the better for us. On an alarm of fire Bill barks his loudest,
dashes about in a frantic manner, till his master and the escape are
on their way to it. He, of course, is there first, giving the police
and the crowd to understand that Wood and his fire-escape are coming.
When the escape is fixed, and Wood begins to ascend the ladder, Bill
runs up the canvas; as soon as a window is opened, Bill leaps in and
dashes about to find the occupants, loudly barking for assistance as
soon as he has accomplished his errand of mercy. His watchfulness and
sagacity are never at fault, although on more than one occasion he has
stood a fair chance of losing his life, and has sustained very severe
injury. Not long ago a collar was presented to Bill as a reward for
his services; unfortunately for him, he has since lost this token of
public regard--a misfortune much to be regretted. The following verse
was engraved on the collar:--
'I am the fire-escape man's dog: my name is Bill.
When 'fire' is called I am never still:
I bark for my master, all danger brave,
To bring the escape--human life to save.'
Collared or collarless, Bill is always ready to lend a helping bark.
May his life be long, and his services properly esteemed!"
The following anecdote shows extraordinary sense, if not reasoning
faculty, in a dog:--
A lady of high rank has a sort of colley, or Scotch sheep-dog. When he
is ordered to ring the bell, he does so; but if he is told to ring the
bell when the servant is in the room whose duty it is to attend, he
refuses, and then the following occurrence takes place. His mistress
says, "Ring the bell, dog." The dog looks at the servant, and then
barks his bow wow, once or twice. The order is repeated two or three
times. At last the dog lays hold of the servant's coat in a
significant manner, just as if he had said to him--"Don't you hear
that I am to ring the bell for you?--come to my lady." His mistress
always had her shoes warmed before she put them on, but one day during
the hot weather her maid was putting them on without their having been
previously placed before the fire. When the dog saw this he
immediately interfered, expressing the greatest indignation at the
maid's negligence. He took the shoes from her, carried them to the
fire, and after they had been warmed as usual, he brought them back to
his mistress with much apparent satisfaction, evidently intending to
say, if he could, "It is all right now."
The dispositions and characters of dogs, as well as their
intelligence, vary very much. Let me give a few instances of this.
When that benevolent man, Mr. Backhouse, went to Australia, in hopes
of doing good among the convicts, he was residing in the house of a
gentleman who had a son about four years of age. This boy strayed one
morning into the bush, and could not be found after a long search had
been made for him. In the evening a little dog, which had accompanied
the child, scratched at the door, and on its being opened showed
unmistakeable signs of wishing to be followed. This was done; and he
led the way to the child, who was at last found sitting by the side of
a river three or four miles from the house.
At Albany in Worcestershire, at the seat of Admiral Maling, a dog went
every day to meet the mail, and brought the bag in his mouth to the
house. The distance was about a half-a-quarter of a mile. The dog
usually received a meal of meat as his reward. The servants having, on
_one day only_, neglected to give him his accustomed meal, the dog on
the arrival of the next mail buried the bag, nor was it found without
considerable search.
M. D'Obsonville had a dog which he had brought up in India from two
months old; and having to go with a friend from Pondicherry to
Bengalore, a distance of more than nine hundred miles, he took the
animal along with him. "Our journey," says M. D'O., "occupied nearly
three weeks; and we had to traverse plains and mountains, and to ford
rivers, and go along by-paths. The animal, which had certainly never
been in that country before, lost us at Bengalore, and immediately
returned to Pondicherry. He went directly to the house of my friend,
M. Beglier, then commandant of artillery, and with whom I had
generally lived. Now the difficulty is not so much to know how the dog
subsisted on the road (for he was very strong, and able to procure
himself food), but how he should so well have found his way after an
interval of more than a month! This was an effort of memory greatly
superior to that which the human race is capable of exerting."
A gentleman residing in Denmark, Mr. Decouick, one of the king's privy
councillors, found that he had a remarkable dog. It was the habit of
Mr. Decouick to leave Copenhagen on Fridays for Drovengourd, his
country seat. If he did not arrive there on the Friday evening, the
dog would invariably be found at Copenhagen on Saturday morning, in
search of his master. Hydrophobia becoming common, all dogs were shot
that were found running about, an exception being made in the case of
Mr. Decouick's dog on account of his sagacity and fidelity, a
distinctive mark being placed upon him.