Later, all this foreshadowing vanishes. At two or three months it is next to impossible to predict what the pup is going to turn into. But in that one brief phase of babyhood the future often is writ clear.
Shawe noticed the coffin-shaped skull, the square muzzle, the full foreface, the set of the tiny ears, the general conformation. Unbelieving, he stared. He picked up the wiggling morsel of fur and flesh and looked more closely at those prophetic head-lines.
“Good Lord!” he mumbled, bewildered, “why,—why, that’s a—a dog! He’s the living image of what King was, at three days. And I picked out King for a great collie when he was this youngster’s age. I’ve never known it to fail. Never, up to now. What’s this measly mongrel doing with the head and build of a winner?”
“Well,” ruminated the kennelman, “we know he’s three-quarter bred, don’t we? King’s his sire. And Shawemere Queen was his dam’s mother. Best blood anywhere in colliedom, ain’t it? And it had to come out, somewheres, didn’t it? Cross-breeding ain’t like mixing feed. You don’t get the same mixture, every measureful you dip out. Some is all one kind and some is all another, and some ain’t neither. Look at them two white fellows! They’re straight bull-pup. (Wherever they got it!) Not a trace of collie to ’em. It’s got to be av’raged up, somewheres. And it’s av’raged up in that little cuss you’re holding there. He’s all collie. Just like the two whitish ones is all bull. It’s——”
“I’ve—I’ve heard of such cases,” muttered Shawe wonderingly, as he laid the tiny pup back at the mother’s side. “But—oh, he’ll most likely develop a body that’ll give him away! Or else the head won’t live up to its promise. Well, leave him, anyhow, when you drown the rest. That can’t do any harm.”
Sheepishly, he gave the order. Still more sheepishly, as he left the stall, he stooped and patted Nina’s lovingly upraised head—the first caress he had ever wasted on the lonely cross-breed.
Thus it was that a great dog was born; and that his promise of greatness was discovered barely in time to save him from death in earliest babyhood. For the collie—or near-collie—pup was destined to greatness, both of body and of brain.
Shawe named him “Buff.” This, of course, without the honorary prefix of the kennel name, “Shawemere.” For Buff could never be registered. His spotty pedigree could never be certified. He could claim no line in the American Kennel Club’s Studbook. He was without recognised lineage; without the right to wear a number after his name.
A dog, to be registered, must come of registered parents. These parents, in turn, must come of registered stock; since no dog, ordinarily, is eligible to registration unless both his sire and dam have been registered. That means his race must have been pure and his blood of unmingled azure since the beginning of his breed’s recognition by the studbooks.