DOGS
My Dog
He wastes no time in idle talk.
His vows of friendship are unspoken.
As in familiar ways we walk,
Our musings by no word are broken.
Or if, perchance, I voice some phrase
(More light and garrulous am I),
He answers with a speaking gaze,
Half-sister to a song or sigh.
Sweet is the silence of a friend
Whose mood so merges with my own,
And sad would be the journey's end
Were I to pass this way alone.
Perhaps the shadows and the dust
Some faint reply would frame for me
Should I demand if Time were just
To merge all waters with the sea.
Thus pondering, a sigh I heave
That thoughts my naked soul should flay.
Yet dreams of death he bids me leave,
And glory in the living day.
Before me in the path he leaps.
He reads my mood, and bids me, "Come!
Sweet Summer's in the wooded deeps!"
And yet men say that he is dumb.
—Jack Burroughs.
Frederick was sitting on the curb, crying, when Billy came along and asked him what was the matter.
"Oh, I feel so bad 'cause Major's dead—my nice old collie!" sobbed Frederick.
"Shucks!" said Billy. "My grandmother's been dead a week, and you don't catch me crying."
Frederick gave his eyes and nose a swipe with his hand, and, looking up at Billy, sobbed, despairingly:
"Yes, but you didn't raise your grandmother from a pup."
Dogs and their Friends.
(The Greeting)
A thousand velvet eyes aglow with thanks,
A thousand tiny paws in welcome waved,
An orchestra of barks and neighs and purrs
Struck up, and maddest gayety betrayed!
Each satin nose will press its owner's hand,
Such happiness and frolic will abound
When Anti-Cruelty meets all its friends
At last, within their Happy Hunting Ground!
—Marie Bordeaux.
Dogs will be dogs.
They also serve who only watch at night and bark.
Tis better to have loved a dog than never to have loved at all.
A little battle now and then is relished by the best of dogs.
Hell hath no fury like an angered bulldog.
For a dog, all roads lead home.
Bark and the whole neighborhood barks with you; hide and
you hide alone.
Dogs should be trained but not hurt.
A buried bone is a joy forever.
Fidelity, thy name is Fido.
—Edmund J. Kiefer.
A friend may smile and bid you hail,
Yet wish you with the devil;
But when a good dog wags his tail,
You know he's on the level.
The Seven Wonders of the World.
(According to Fido)
His master.
Meat.
Children.
Rags.
The moon.
Being tickled.
Fleas.
He was a very small boy. Paddy was his dog, and Paddy was nearer to his heart than anything on earth. When Paddy met swift and hideous death on the turnpike road the boy's mother trembled to break the news. But it had to be, and when he came home from school she told him simply:
"Paddy has been run over and killed."
He took it very quietly. All day it was the same. But five minutes after he had gone to bed there echoed through the house a shrill and sudden lamentation. His mother rushed upstairs with solicitude and pity.
"Nurse says," he sobbed, "that Paddy has been run over and killed."
"But, dear, I told you that at dinner, and you didn't seem to be troubled at all."
"No; but—but I didn't know you said Paddy. I—I thought you said daddy!"
PUP—"Great cats; That's a nerve! Somebody has put up a building right where I buried a bone!"—Puck.
See also Dachshunds.