I
Of all anachronisms and survivals the love of the dog is the most
reasonless. Because, some thousands of years ago, when we all wore
other skins than our own and sat enthroned upon our haunches, tearing
tangles of tendons from raw bones with our teeth, the dog ministered
purveyorwise to our savage needs, we go on cherishing him to this day,
when his only function is to lie sun-soaken on a door mat and insult
us as we pass in and out enamored of his fat superfluity. One dog in a
thousand earns his bread—and takes beefsteak; the other nine hundred
and ninety-nine we maintain in the style suitable to their state by
cheating the poor.
The trouble with the modern dog is that he is the same old dog. Not
an inch has the rascal advanced along the line of evolution. We have
ceased to squat upon our naked haunches and gnaw raw bones, but this
companion of the childhood of the race, this vestigial remnant of
_juventus mundi_, this dismal anachronism, this veteran inharmony in
the scheme of things, the dog, has abated no jot nor tittle of his
unthinkable objectionableness since the morning stars sang together
and he had sat up all night to deflate a lung at the performance.
Possibly he may some time be improved otherwise than by effacement,
but at present he is still in that early stage of reform that is not
inconsistent with a mouthful of reformer.
The dog is a detestable quadruped. He knows more ways to be
unmentionable than can be named in seven languages. The word “dog” is
a term of contempt the world over, as in the Scriptures. Poets have
sung and prosaists have prosed of the virtues of individual dogs, but
nobody has had the hardihood to eulogize the species. No man loves the
Dog; one loves his own dog, and there stops; the force of perverted
affection can no further go. He loves his own dog partly because that
thrifty creature, ever cadging when not marauding, tickles his vanity
by fawning upon him as the visible source of steaks and bones; and
partly because the graceless beast insults everybody else, harming as
many as he dares.
The dog is an encampment of fleas, and a reservoir of sinful smells.
He is prone to bad manners as the sparks fly upward. He has no
discrimination; his loyalty is given to the person that feeds him,
be the same a blackguard or a murderer. He fights for his master
without regard to the justice of the quarrel—wherein he is no better
than a patriot or a soldier. There are men who are proud of a dog’s
love—and dogs love that kind of men. There are men who, having the
privilege of loving women, insult them by loving dogs; and there are
women who forgive and respect their canine rivals. Women, I am told,
are true cynolaters; they adore not only dogs, but Dog—not only their
own horrible little beasts, but those of others. But women will love
anything; they even love men who love dogs. I sometimes wonder how
it is that of all our women among whom the dog fad is prevalent none
has incurred the husband fad, or the child fad. Possibly there are
exceptions, but it seems to be a rule that the female heart which has
a dog in it is without other lodgers. There is not, probably, a very
wild and importunate demand for accommodation. For my part, I do not
know which is the less desirable, the tenant or the tenement. There
are dogs that submit to be kissed by women base enough to kiss them;
but they have a secret, coarse revenge. For the dog is a joker, withal,
gifted with as much humor as is consistent with biting.
Miss Louise Imogen Guiney has replied to Mrs. Meynell’s proposal to
abolish the dog—a proposal which Miss Guiney has the originality to
call “original.” Divested of its “literature,” Miss Guiney’s plea for
the defendant consists, essentially, of the following assertions: (1)
Dogs are whatever their masters are. (2) They bite only those who fear
them. (3) Really vicious dogs are not found nearer than Constantinople.
(4) Only wronged dogs go mad, and hydrophobia is retaliation. (5)
In actions for damages for dog-bites judicial prejudice is against
the dog. (6) Dogs are continually saving children from death. (7)
Association with dogs begets piety, tenderness, mercy, loyalty, and so
forth; in brief, the dog is an elevating influence: “to walk modestly
at a dog’s heels is a certificate of merit!” As to that last, if
Miss Guiney had ever had the educating good fortune to observe the
dog himself walking modestly at the heels of another dog she would
perhaps have wished that it were not the custom of her sex to seal the
certificate of merit with a kiss.
In all this absurd woman’s statements, thus fairly epitomized, there
is not one that is true—not one of which the essential falsity is not
evident, obvious, conspicuous to even the most delinquent observation.
Yet with the smartness and smirk of a graduating seminary girl refuting
Epicurus she marshals them against the awful truth that every year in
Europe and the United States alone more than one thousand human beings
die of hydrophobia—a fact which her controversial conscience does not
permit her to mention. The names on this needless death-roll are mostly
those of small folk, the sins of whose parents in cherishing their own
hereditary love of dogs is visited upon their children because these
have not the intelligence and agility to get out of the way. Or perhaps
they lack that tranquil courage upon which Miss Guiney relies to avert
the canine tooth from her own inedible shank.
Finally this amusing illogician, this type and example of the female
controversialist, has the hardihood to hope that there may be fathers
who can see their children die the horrible death of hydrophobia
without wishing “to exile man’s best ideal of fidelity from the
hearthstones of civilization.” If we must have an “ideal of fidelity”
why not find it, not in the dog that kills the child, but in the father
that kills the dog? The profit of maintaining a standard and pattern
of the virtues (at considerable expense in the case of this insatiable
canine consumer) may be great, but are we so hard pushed that we must
go to the animals for it? In life and letters are there no men and
women whose names kindle enthusiasm and emulation? Is fidelity, is
devotion, is self-sacrifice unknown among ourselves? As a model of the
higher virtues why will not one’s mother serve at a pinch? And what is
the matter with Miss Guiney herself? She is faithful, at least to dogs,
whatever she may be to the hundreds of American children foredoomed to
a death of unthinkable agony from hydrophobia.
There is perhaps a hope that when the sun’s returning flame shall gild
the hither end of the thirtieth century this savage and filthy brute,
the dog, will have ceased to “banquet on through a whole year” of human
fat and lean; that he will have been gathered to his variously unworthy
fathers to give an account of his deeds done in the body of man. In
the meantime, those of us who have not the enlightened understanding
to be enamored of him may endure with such fortitude as we can command
his feats of tooth among the shins and throats of those who have; we
ourselves are so few that there is a strong numerical presumption of
personal immunity.
It is well to have a clear understanding of such inconveniences as
may be expected to ensue from dog-bites. That inconveniences and even
discomforts do sometimes flow from, or at least follow, the mischance
of being bitten by dogs, even the sturdiest champion of “man’s best
friend” will admit when not heated by controversy. True, he is
indisposed to sympathy for those incurring the inconveniences and
discomforts, but against this apparent incompassion may be offset his
indubitable sympathy with the dog. No one is altogether heartless.
Amongst the several disadvantages of a close personal connection with
the canine tooth, the disorder known as hydrophobia has long held an
undisputed primacy. The existence of this ailment is attested by so
many witnesses, many of whom, belonging to the profession of medicine,
speak with a certain authority, that even the breeders and lovers
of snap-dogs are compelled reluctantly to concede it, though as a
rule they stoutly deny that it is imparted by the dog. In their view,
hydrophobia is a theory, not a condition. The patient, even if he is
a babe, imagines himself to have it, and acting upon that unsupported
assumption or hypothesis, suffers and dies in the attempt to square his
conduct with his opinions. It seems there is firmer ground for their
view of the matter than the rest of us have been willing to admit.
There is such a thing, doubtless, as hydrophobia proper, but also there
is such another thing as pseudo-hydrophobia, or hydrophobia improper.
Pseudo-hydrophobia, the physicians explain, is caused by fear of
hydrophobia. The patient, having been chewed by a healthy and harmless
dog, broods upon his imaginary peril, solicitously watches his
imaginary symptoms and finally persuading himself of their reality,
puts them on exhibition as he understands them. He runs about (when
permitted) on his hands and knees, growls, barks, howls and, in default
of a tail, wags the part of him where it would be if he had it. In a
few days he is gone before, a victim to his lack of confidence in man’s
best friend.
The number of cases of pseudo-hydrophobia, relative to those of true
hydrophobia, is not definitely known, the medical records having been
imperfectly made and never collated; champions of the snap-dog, as
intimated, believe it is many to nothing. That being so (they argue)
the animal is entirely exonerated and leaves the discussion without a
stain upon his reputation.
But that is feeble reasoning; even if we grant their premises we can
not embrace their conclusion. In the first place, it hurts to be bitten
by a dog, as the dog himself audibly confesses when bitten by another
dog. Furthermore, pseudo-hydrophobia is quite as fatal as if it were a
legitimate product of the bite, not a result of the terror which that
mischance inspires.
Human nature being what it is, and well known to the dog to be what
it is, we have a right to expect that the creature will take our
weaknesses into consideration—that he will respect our addiction to
reasonless panic, even as we respect his when, as we commonly do, we
refrain from attaching tinware to his tail. A dog that runs himself
to death to evade a kitchen utensil which could not possibly harm
him, and which if he did not flee would not pursue, is the author
of his own undoing in precisely the same sense as is the victim of
pseudo-hydrophobia. He is slain by a theory. Yet the wicked boy that
set him going is not blameless, and no one would be so zealous and
strenuous in his prosecution as the cynolater, the adorer of dogs, the
person who holds them guiltless of pseudo-hydrophobia.