descriptive title, will be certain changes noticeable during recent
years in the dogs of the metropolis, and, in a less degree, of the
country generally. At the same time there has been an improvement in
the character of the dog population, due mainly to the weeding out
of the baser breeds, but this matter does not concern us here; the
change with which I propose to deal is in the temper and, as to one
particular, the habits of the animal. This was the result of the famous
(it used to be called the infamous) muzzling order of 1897, which
restrained dogs throughout the country from following their ancient
custom of quarrelling with and biting one another for the unprecedented
period of two and a half years. Nine hundred days and over may not seem
too long a period of restraint in the case of a being whose natural
term runs to threescore years and ten, but in poor Tatters’ or Towzer’s
brief existence of a dozen summers it is the equivalent of more than
twenty years in the life of the human animal.
As a naturalist I was interested in the muzzling order, and after
noting its effects my interest in the subject has continued ever since.
It should also, I imagine, be a matter of interest and importance
to all who have a special regard for the dog or who are “devoted to
dogs,” who regard them as the “friends of man,” even holding with the
canophilists of the old Youatt period of the last century that the dog
was specially created to fill the place of man’s servant and companion.
Strange to say, I have not yet met with any person of the dog-loving
kind who has himself noticed any change in the temper or habits of the
dog during the last fourteen or fifteen years or has any knowledge
of it. One can only suppose--and this applies not only to those who
cherish a peculiar affection for the dog, but to the numerous body of
London naturalists as well--that the change was unmarked on account of
the very long period during which the order was in force, when dogs
were deprived of the power to bite, so that when the release came the
former condition of things in the animal world was no longer distinctly
remembered. It was doubtless assumed that, the muzzle once removed, all
things were exactly as they had been before: if a few remembered and
noticed the change, they failed to record it--at all events I have seen
nothing about it in print. Circumstances made it impossible for me not
to notice the immediate effect of the order, and at the end of the time
to forget the state of things as they existed before its imposition.
I was probably more confined to London during the years 1897-9 than
most persons who are keenly interested in animal life, and being so
confined, I was compelled to gratify my taste or passion by paying a
great deal of attention to the only animals that there are to observe
in our streets, the dog being the most important. I also took notes of
what I observed--my way of remembering not to forget; and, refreshing
my mind by returning to them, I am able to recover a distinct picture
of the state of things in the pre-muzzling times. It is a very
different state from that of to-day. One thing that was a cause of
surprise to me in those days was the large number of dogs, mostly
mongrels and curs, to be seen roaming masterless about the streets.
These I classed as pariahs, although they all, no doubt, had their
homes in mean streets and courts, just as the ownerless pariah dogs in
Eastern towns have their homes--their yard or pavement or spot of waste
ground where they live and bask in the sun when not roaming in quest of
food and adventures. Many of these London pariahs were wretched-looking
objects, full of sores and old scars, some like skeletons and others
with half their hair off from mange and other skin diseases. They were
to be seen all over London, always hunting for food, hanging about
areas, like the bone- and bottle-buyers, looking for an open dust-bin
where something might be found to comfort their stomachs. They also
haunted butchers’ shops, where the butcher kept a jealous eye on their
movements and sent them away with a kick and a curse whenever he got
the chance. Most, if not all, of these poor dogs had owners who gave
them shelter but no food or very little, and probably in most cases
succeeded in evading the licence duty.
There is no doubt that in the past the dog population of London was
always largely composed of animals of this kind--“curs of low degree,”
and a great variety of mongrels, mostly living on their wits. An
account of the dogs of London of two or three or four centuries ago
would have an extraordinary interest for us now, but, unfortunately, no
person took the pains to write it. Caius, our oldest writer on dogs,
says of “curres of the mungrel and rascall sort”--the very animals
we want to know about: “Of such dogs as keep not their kind, of such
as are mingled out of sundry sortes not imitating the conditions of
some one certaine Spece, because they resemble no notable shape, nor
exercise any worthy property of the true, perfect, and gentle kind,
it is not necesarye that I write any more of them, but to banish
them as unprofitable implements out of the boundes of my Booke.” It
is regrettable that he did “banish” them, as he appears to have been
something of an observer on his own account. Had he given us a few
pages on the life and habits of the “rascall sort” of animal, his
_Booke of Englishe Dogges_, which after so many centuries is still
occasionally reprinted, would have been as valuable to us now as
Turner’s on British birds (1544) and Willughby’s half a century later
on the same subject, and as Gould’s brilliant essay on the habits of
British ants--which, by the way, has never been reprinted--and as
Gilbert White’s classic, which came later in the eighteenth century.
That the bond uniting man and dog in all instances when the poor brute
was obliged to fend for himself in the inhospitable streets of London
was an exceedingly frail one was plainly seen when the muzzling order
of 1897 was made. An extraordinary number of apparently ownerless
dogs, unmuzzled and collarless, were found roaming about the streets
and taken by hundreds every week to the lethal chamber. In thirty
months the dog population of the metropolis had decreased by about one
hundred thousand. The mongrels and dogs of the “rascall sort” had all
but vanished, and this was how the improvement in the character of
the dog population mentioned before came about immediately. But a far
more important change had been going on at the same time--the change
in the temper of our dogs; and it may here be well to remark that this
change in disposition was not the result of the weeding-out process I
have described. The better breeds are not more amiable than the curs
of low degree. The man who has made a friend and companion of the cur
will tell you that he is as nice-tempered, affectionate, faithful, and
intelligent as the nobler kinds, the dogs of “notable shape.”
Let us now go back to the muzzling time of 1897-9, and I will give
here the substance of the notes I made at the time. They have among
my notes on many subjects a peculiar interest to me as a naturalist
because in the comments I made at the time I ventured to make a
prediction which has not been fulfilled. I was astonished and delighted
to find that (on this one occasion) I had proved a false prophet.
* * * * *
The dog-muzzling question (I wrote) does not interest me personally,
since I keep no dog, nor love to see so intelligent and serviceable a
beast degraded to the position of a mere pet or plaything--a creature
that has lost or been robbed of its true place in the scheme of things.
Looking at the matter from the outside, simply as a student of the
ways of animals, I am surprised at the outcry made against Mr. Long’s
order, especially here in London, where there is so great a multitude
of quite useless animals. No doubt a large majority of the dogs of the
metropolis are household pets, pure and simple, living indoors in the
same rooms as their owners, in spite of their inconvenient instincts.
On this subject I have had my say in an article on “The Great Dog
Superstition,” for which I have been well abused; the only instinct of
the dog with which I am concerned at present is that of pugnacity. This
is like his love of certain smells disgusting to us, part and parcel
of his being, so that for a dog to be perfectly gentle and without
the temper that barks and bites must be taken as evidence of its
decadence--not of the individual but of the race or breed or variety.
Whether this fact is known or only dimly surmised by dog-lovers, more
especially by those who set the fashion in dogs, we see that in recent
years there has been a distinct reaction against the more degenerate
kinds[1]--those in whose natures the jackal and wild-dog writing has
quite or all but faded out--the numerous small toy terriers; the
Italian greyhound, shivering like an aspen leaf; the drawing-room pug,
ugliest of man’s (the breeder’s) many inventions; the pathetic Blenheim
and King Charles spaniels, the Maltese, the Pomeranian, and all the
others that have, so to speak, rubbed themselves out by acquiring a
white liver to please their owners’ fantastic tastes. A more vigorous
beast is now in favour, and one of the most popular is undoubtedly the
fox-terrier. This is assuredly the doggiest dog we possess, the most
aggressive, born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. From my own point
of view it is only right that fox-terriers and all other good fighters
should have liberty to go out daily into the streets in their thousands
in search of shindies, to strive with and worry one another to their
hearts’ content; then to skulk home, smelling abominably of carrion
and carnage, and, hiding under their master’s sofa, or other dark
place, to spend the time licking their wounds until they are well again
and ready to go out in search of fresh adventures. For God hath made
them so.
[Footnote 1: Alas! since these notes were made, fourteen years ago,
there has been a recrudescence of the purely woman’s drawing-room
pet dog. The wretched griffon, looking like a mean cheap copy of the
little Yorkshire--one of the few small pet animals which has not wholly
lost its soul--appears to have vanished. But the country has now been
flooded with the Pekinese, and one is made to loathe it from the
constant sight of it in every drawing-room and railway carriage and
motor-car and omnibus, clasped in a woman’s arms.]
But this is by no means the view of the gentle ladies and mild-tempered
gentlemen who own them, nor, I dare say, of any canophilist, whether
the owner of a dog or not. What these people want is that their canine
friends shall have the same liberty enjoyed by themselves to make use
of our streets and parks without risk of injury or insult; that they
shall be free to notice or not the salutations and advances of others
of their kind; to graciously accept or contemptuously refuse, with
nose in air, according to the mood they may happen to be in or to the
state of their digestive organs, an invitation to a game of romps.
This liberty and safety they do now undoubtedly enjoy, thanks to the
much-abused muzzling order.
It is true that to the canine mind this may not be an ideal liberty:
“For on a knight that hath neither hardihood nor valour in himself,
may not another knight that hath more force in him reasonably prove
his mettle; for many a time have I heard say that one is better than
other.” These words, spoken by the Best Knight in the World, exactly
fit the case of the fox-terrier, or any other vigorous variety whose
one desire when he goes out into the world is reasonably to prove his
mettle. ’Tis an ancient and noble principle of action, conceivably
advantageous in certain circumstances; but in the conditions in which
we human beings find ourselves placed it is not tolerated, and the
valour and hardihood of our Percivals may no longer shine in the dark
forests of this modern world.
Is it, then, so monstrous a thing, so great a tyranny, that the same
restraint which has this long time been put upon the best and brightest
of our own kind should now, for the public good, be imposed on our
four-footed companions and servants! True, we think solely of ourselves
when we impose the restraint, but incidentally (and entirely apart from
the question of rabies) we are at the same time giving the greatest
protection to the dogs themselves. Furthermore--and here we come to
the point which mainly concerns us--the reflex effect of the muzzle on
the dogs themselves may now be seen to be purely beneficial. Confining
ourselves to London, the change in the animals’ disposition, or at all
events behaviour, has been very remarkable. It has forcibly reminded
me of the change of temper I have witnessed in a rude, semi-barbarous
community when some one in authority has issued an order that at all
festivals and other public gatherings every man shall yield up his
weapons--knives, pistols, iron-handled whips, etc.--to some person
appointed to receive them, or be turned back from the gates. The result
of such a general disarmament has been an all-round improvement in
temper, a disposition of the people to mix freely instead of separating
into well-defined groups, each with some famous fighting-man, wearing
a knife as long as a sword, for its centre; also instead of wild and
whirling words, dust raised, and blood shed, great moderation in
language, good humour, and reasonableness in argument.
In the same way we may see that our dogs grow less and less quarrelsome
as they become more conscious of their powerlessness to inflict injury.
Their confidence, and with it their friendliness towards one another,
increases; the most masterful or truculent cease from bullying, the
timid outgrow their timidity, and in their new-found glad courage
dare to challenge the fiercest among them to a circular race and
rough-and-tumble on the grass.
Now all this, from the point of view of those who make toys of sentient
and intelligent beings, is or should be considered pure gain. Moreover,
this undoubted improvement could not have come about if the muzzle
had been the painful instrument that some dog-owners believe or say.
It seems to me that those who cry out against torturing our dogs, as
they put it, do not love their pets wisely and are bad observers.
Undoubtedly every restraint is in some degree disagreeable, but it
is only when an animal has been deprived of the power to exercise
his first faculties and obey his most importunate impulses that the
restraint can properly be described as painful. Take the case of
a chained dog; he is miserable, as any one may see since there are
many dogs in that condition, because eternally conscious of the
restraint; and the perpetual craving for liberty, like that of the
healthy energetic man immured in a cell, rises to positive torture.
Again, we know that smell is the most important sense of the dog,
that it is as much to him as vision to the bird; consequently, to
deprive him of the use of this all-important faculty by, let us say,
plugging up his nostrils, or by destroying the olfactory nerve in some
devilish way known to the vivisectors, would be to make him perfectly
miserable, just as the destruction of its sense of sight would make
a bird miserable. By comparison the restraint of the muzzle is very
slight indeed: smell, hearing, vision are unaffected, and there is no
interference with free locomotion; indeed so slight is the restraint
that after a while the animal is for the most part unconscious of it
except when the impulse to bite or to swallow a luscious bit of carrion
is excited.
We frequently see or hear of dogs that joyfully run off to fetch their
muzzles when they are called to go out for a walk, or even before they
are called if they but see any preparations being made for a walk: no
person will contend that these are made unhappy by the muzzle, or that
they deliberately weigh two evils in their mind and make choice of the
lesser. The most that may be said is that these muzzle-fetchers are
exceptions, though they may be somewhat numerous. For how otherwise
can the fact be explained that some dogs, however ready and anxious to
go for a walk they may be, will, on catching sight of the muzzle, turn
away with tail between their legs and the expression of a dog that has
been kicked or unjustly rebuked? My experience is that this attitude
towards the muzzle of some dogs, which was quite common in the early
muzzling days, is now rare and is dying out. The explanation, I think,
is that as the muzzle is at first keenly felt as a restraint, imposed
for no cause that the dog sees, it is in fact taken as a punishment,
and resented as much as an undeserved blow or angry word would be.
Every one who observes dogs must be familiar with the fact that they
do very often experience the feeling of injury and resentment towards
their human masters and companions. As a rule this feeling vanishes
with the exciting cause; unfortunately, in some cases the sight of the
muzzle becomes associated with the feeling and is slow to disappear.
But if dogs still exist in this city of dogs that show any sign of such
a feeling when a muzzle is held up before them, we can see that even
in these super-sensitive ones it vanishes the instant they are out of
doors. Again, let any person watch the scores and hundreds of dogs that
disport themselves in our grassy parks on any fine day, and he will
quickly be convinced that not only are they happy but that they are far
happier than any company of unmuzzled dogs thrown casually together.
They are happier, madly happy, because they know--this knowledge
having now filtered down into their souls--that it is perfectly safe
for them to associate with their fellows, to be hail-fellow-well-met
with all the dogs in the place, from the tiniest trembling lap-dog to
the burliest and most truculent-looking bull-dog and the most gigantic
St. Bernard or Danish boarhound. It is for us a happiness to see their
confidence, their mad games, the way they all chase and tumble over one
another, pretending to be furious and fighting a grand battle.
I do not say that there is any radical or any permanent change in
the dog’s character. Like other beasts, he is morally and mentally
non-progressive; that which the uninformed canophilist takes as
progression is merely decadence. Remove the muzzle, and in a short
time the habit which the muzzle has bred will fade away and the old
bickerings and bullyings and blood-sheddings begin afresh. As it is,
some dogs refuse to let their fighting temper rust in spite of the
muzzle.
In Hyde Park some time ago I witnessed a sublime but bloodless battle
between a Danish boarhound and a bull-dog. Neither of them lost
consciousness of the muzzle which prevented them from “washing” their
teeth in one another’s blood; they simply dashed themselves against
each other, then drew back and dashed together again and again, with
such fury that they would, no doubt, have succeeded in injuring each
other had not their owners, assisted by several persons who were
looking on, succeeded in drawing them apart.
One more instance of many which I have observed during the last
two years. This is of a rather large and exceptionally powerful
fox-terrier, who when out for a walk keeps a very sharp look-out for
other dogs, and the instant he spies one not bigger than himself
charges him furiously and with the impact hurls him to the ground, and,
leaving him there, he dashes on in search of a fresh victim.
These are, however, exceptions, few individuals having intelligence
enough to find out a new way of inflicting injury. As a rule the dog of
ineradicably savage temper looks at his fellows as if saying, “Oh, for
five minutes with this cursed muzzle off!” And the others, seeing his
terrible aspect, are glad that the muzzle is on--a _blessed_ muzzle it
is to them; and if they only knew what the doggie people were saying in
the papers and could express their views on the subject, many of them
would be heard to cry out, “Save us from our friends!”
* * * * *
The muzzling order had thus appeared to me as a sort of Golden Age of
the metropolitan dogs--and cats, for these too had incidentally been
affected and strangely altered in their habits. And here I must say
that all I wrote in my note-book about the dogs during and just after
the muzzling period has been compressed into as short a space as
possible, and all I wrote about the cats (as indirectly affected by
the order) has been left out for want of space to deal with the entire
subject in a single chapter.
When dog-owners were rejoicing to hear that the Board of Agriculture
had come to the conclusion that rabies had been completely stamped out,
and were eagerly looking forward to the day when they would be allowed
to remove the hated muzzle from their pets, the prospect did not seem
a very pleasant one to me and to many others who kept no pets. I was
prepared once more for the old familiar but unforgotten spectacle of
a big dog-fight in the streets producing a joyful excitement in a
crowd, quickly sprung out of the stones of the pavement as it were, of
loafers and wastrels of all kinds--keen sportsmen every one of them--a
spectacle which was witnessed every day by any person who took a walk
in London before the muzzling time. These scenes would be common again:
in one day the dogs’ (and cats’) dream of perpetual peace would be
ended, and all canines of a lofty spirit would go forth again like the
good Arthurian knight and the Zulu warrior to wash his long-unused
weapons in an adversary’s blood. But I was wrong. A habit had been
formed in those two and a half years of restraint which did not lose
its power at once: the something new which had come into the dog’s
heart still held him. But it would not, it could not, hold him long.
Days followed and nothing happened--the Golden Age was still on. I
walked the streets and watched and waited; then, when nearly a week had
elapsed, I witnessed a fine old-fashioned dog-fight, with two dogs in
a tangle on the ground biting and tearing each other with incredible
fury and with all the growls and shrieks and other warlike noises
appropriate to the occasion. From all parts around the “wond’ring
neighbours ran” to look on, even as in former times down to the blessed
year 1897.
“Just as I thought!” I exclaimed, and heartily wished that the
President of the Board of Agriculture had made the muzzling order a
perpetual one.
Other days and weeks followed and I witnessed no serious quarrel, and
later it was so rare to see a dog-fight in the streets and parks,
fights which one used to witness every day, that I began to think the
new pacific habit had got a tighter grip on the animal than I could
have believed. It would, I thought, perhaps take them two or three
months to outgrow it and go back to their true natures.
I was wrong again: not months only but years have gone by--fourteen
to fifteen years--and the beneficent change which had been wrought in
those thirty months of restraint about which so great a pother was made
at the time by dog-owners has continued to the present time.
We may say that in more senses than one the dogs (and cats) of the
London of to-day are not the same beings we were familiar with in the
pre-muzzling days. The object of that order we have seen was gained
in the brief period of thirty months. Hydrophobia for the first time
in the annals of England had ceased to exist, and so long as the
quarantine law is faithfully observed will perhaps never return. Rabies
broke out again in this country in 1917, its first reappearance since
1897, owing to some person having succeeded in eluding the quarantine
order and bringing an infected dog to Plymouth. From that centre it
spread to other parts of Devon and to Cornwall, and despite the prompt
action of the authorities in imposing a new muzzling order in these
two counties, the infection has spread to other parts of the country,
and new muzzling orders are being issued just now--April 1919. Up till
the year of 1897 the average number of persons who perished annually
as the result of a dog-bite was twenty-nine. “Well, that’s not many
in a population of forty millions,” cried the canophilists; but for
twenty-nine who actually died of dog-madness, the most horrible shape
in which death can appear to a human being, there were hundreds, and
probably thousands, every year who lived for weeks and months in a
constant state of apprehension lest some slight bite or abrasion
received from the tooth of an angry or playful dog should result in
that frightful malady.