Dog Stories from the "Spectator" / Being anecdotes of the intelligence, reasoning power, affection and sympathy of dogs, selected from the correspondence columns of "The Spectator"

by Unknown

INSTINCT OF LOCALITY IN DOGS.

[March 4, 1893.]

A cat carried a hundred miles in a basket, a dog taken, perhaps, five hundred miles by rail, in a few days may have found their way back to the starting-point. So we have often been told, and, no doubt, the thing has happened. We have been astonished at the wonderful intelligence displayed. Magic, I should call it. Last week I heard of a captain who sailed from Aberdeen to Arbroath. He left behind him a dog which, according to the story, had never been in Arbroath, but when he arrived there the dog was waiting on the quay. I was expected to believe that the dog had known his master's destination, and been able to inquire the way overland to Arbroath. Truly marvellous! But, really, it is time to inquire more carefully as to what these stories do mean; we must cease to ascribe our intelligence to animals, and learn that it is we that often possess their instinct. A cat on a farm will wander many miles in search of prey, and will therefore be well acquainted with the country for many miles round. It is taken fifty miles away. Again it wanders, and comes across a bit of country it knew before. What more natural than that it should go to its old home? Carrier-pigeons are taught "homing" by taking them gradually longer flights from home, so that they may learn the look of the country. We cannot always discover that a dog actually was acquainted with the route by which it wanders home; but it is quite absurd to imagine, as most people at once do, that it was a perfect stranger to the lay of the land. To find our way a second time over ground we have once trod is scarcely intelligence; we can only call it instinct, though the word does not in the least explain the process. Two years ago I first visited Douglas, in the Isle of Man. I reached the station at 11 p.m.; I was guided to a house a mile through the town. I scarcely paid any attention to the route, yet next morning I found my way by the same route to the station, walking with my head bent, deeply thinking all the time about other things than the way. I have the instinct of locality. Most people going into a dark room that they know are by muscular sense guided exactly to the very spot they wish; so people who have the instinct of locality may wander over a moor exactly to the place they wish to reach without thinking of where they go. There may be no mental exercise connected with this. I have known a lady of great intelligence who would lose her way within half-a-mile of the house she had lived in forty years. This feeling about place belongs to that part of us that we have in common with the lower creatures. We need not postulate that the animals ever show signs of possessing our intelligence; they possess, in common with us, what is not intelligence, but instinct.

A. J. Mackintosh.

[Sept. 24, 1892.]

Will you allow me to record in the Spectator "another dog story"? It is one that testifies, for the thousandth time, to canine sagacity, and, as we are still in the silly season, which has this year in particular been so very prolific in human follies, it may be of special interest to learn some clever doings on the part of beasts. Quite recently a Westphalian squire travelled by rail from Lüxen to Wesel, on the Rhine, for the purpose of enjoying some hunting, and took with him his favourite hound. The hunting party was to have started on a Sunday morning at nine o'clock, but, to the squire's great disappointment, his sporting dog could nowhere be discovered. Disconsolate, he arrived on the following Monday afternoon at his house, and, to his great delight, he was greeted there with exuberant joy by his dog. The latter, who had never made the journey from Lüxen to Wesel, had simply run home, thus clearing a distance of eighty English miles through an unknown country. Why the sporting dog should have declined to join the hunt is, perhaps, a greater mystery than the fact of his returning home without any other guidance than his sagacious instinct. Possibly he was a Sabbatarian, and objected to imitate his master's wicked example. So, Sunday papers, please copy!

Ein Thierfreund.

[Sept. 8, 1894.]

May I be allowed to offer to your readers yet another instance of the faithfulness and sagacity of our friend the dog? The anecdote comes from a distinguished naval officer, and is best given in his own words: "This is what happened to a spaniel of mine. It was given to our children as a puppy about three or four months old, and we have had it about five or six months, making it about ten months old. It was born about three miles from here, at Hertford, and has never been anywhere but from one home to the other. When the time came for breaking him in for shooting purposes, I sent him to a keeper at Leighton-Buzzard, and, to insure a safe arrival, sent the dog with my man-servant to the train here, and thence to King's Cross. He walked with the dog to Euston Station, turned him over to the guard of the 12.15 train and the animal duly arrived at Leighton-Buzzard at 1.30, and was there met by the keeper and taken to his home about three miles off. That was on the Friday. On the following Tuesday, the dog having been with him three full days, he took him out in the morning with his gun, and at eight o'clock on Wednesday morning (that being the following day) the dog appeared here, rather dirty, and looking as if he had travelled some distance, which he undoubtedly had. There is no doubt that this puppy of ten months old was sent away, certainly forty or fifty miles as the crow flies, and that he returned here in a day. How he did it no one can say, but it is nevertheless a fact. It would be interesting to know his route and to trace his adventures." This anecdote is the more remarkable in consequence of the extreme youth of the dog, and particularly as he belongs to a breed of sporting dogs which are not generally considered to rank among the most intelligent of the species.

F. H. Suckling.

[Sept. 15, 1894.]

The "True Story of a Dog," in the Spectator of September 8th, may be matched, possibly explained, by a similar occurrence. I had bought a Spanish poodle pup of an Irishman who assured me, "Indade, sir, an' the dog knows all my childer do, only he can't talk." He shut doors, opened those with thumb-latches, and rushed upstairs and waked his mistress at words of command. One day we were starting to drive to our former home in the city, six miles distant, but the dog was refused his usual place in the carriage, and shut up in the house. When we arrived, to our astonishment we found him waiting for us on the doorstep! We could not conceive how he got there, but upon inquiry found that he had got out, gone to the station, in some way entered the train, hid under a seat, and on arrival in the city threaded his way a mile through the streets, and was found quietly awaiting our arrival.

R. P. S.

[May 3, 1884.]

How do we know that in inviting dogs to the use of words Sir John Lubbock is developing their intelligence? Are we sure that he is not asking them to descend to a lower level than their own, in teaching them to communicate with us through our proper forms of speech, unnecessary to them? I can vouch for the truth of the following story. A young keeper, living about twelve miles east of Winchester, on leaving his situation gave away a fox-terrier, which had been his constant companion for some months; he then took another place in the north of Hampshire, near the borders of Berkshire, in a part of the country to which he had never been. The new owner of the dog took her with him to a village in Sussex; before she had been there long she disappeared, and after a short time found her old master in the woods at his new home. As I have said before, he had never been there before, neither had she. Rather ungratefully, he again gave the dog away, this time to a man living some way north of Berkshire; she came back to him in a few days, and, I am happy to say, is now to be allowed to stay with the master of her choice. Can such a nature need to be taught our clumsy language.

A. H. Williams.

[Feb. 16, 1895.]

As I see that you have published some interesting anecdotes about dogs, I send you the two following, which perhaps you may think worth inserting.

In 1873 we came to live in England, after a residence upon the Continent, bringing with us a Swiss terrier of doubtful breed but of marked sagacity, called Tan. One day, shortly after reaching the new home from Switzerland, the dog was lost under the following circumstances:—We had driven to a station eight miles off—East Harling—to meet a friend. As the friend got out of the railway carriage the dog got in without being noticed and the train proceeded on its way. At the next station—Eccles Road—the dog's barking attracted the attention of the station-master, who opened the carriage door, and the dog jumped out. The station-master and the dog were perfect strangers. He and a porter tried to lock up the dog, but he flew viciously at any one who attempted to touch him, although he was not above accepting food. For the next three days his behaviour was decidedly methodical; starting from the station in the morning, he came back dejected and tired at night. At last, on the evening of the third day, he reached home, some nine miles away, along roads which he had not before travelled, a sorry object and decidedly the worse for wear; after some food he slept for twenty-four hours straight off.

Anecdote number two. One day a handsome black, smooth-haired retriever puppy was given to us, whom we named Neptune. The terrier Tan greatly resented having this new companion thrust upon him, and became very jealous of him. Being small, he was unable to tackle so large a dog, but sagacity accomplished what strength could not. Tan disappeared for two days. One evening, hearing a tremendous commotion in the yard, we rushed out to find a huge dog of the St. Bernard species inflicting a severe castigation upon poor Nep, Tan meanwhile looking on, complacently wagging his tail. Both Tan and his companion then disappeared for two more days, after which Tan reappeared alone, apparently in an equable frame of mind, and satisfied that he had had his revenge. We never discovered where the large dog came from. I can attest the truth of the two stories.

Cecil Downton.