Lad’s story is told in detail, elsewhere; and I have here written overlong about him. But his human traits were myriad and it is hard for me to condense an account of him.
Then there was Bruce,—hero of my dogbook of the same name. Bruce’s “pedigree name” was Sunnybank Goldsmith; and for many years he brought local dog-show fame to the Place by an unbroken succession of victories. A score of cups and medals and an armful of blue ribbons attest his physical perfection.
But dog-shows take no heed of a collie’s mentality, nor of the thousand wistfully lovable traits which make him what he is. When we carved on Bruce’s headstone the inscription, “The Dog Without a Fault,” we referred less to his physical magnificence than to the soul and the heart of him.
He was wholly different from Lad. He lacked Lad’s d’Artagnan-like dash and gaiety and uncanny wisdom. Yet he was clever. And he had a strange sweetness of nature that I have found in no other dog. That, and a perfect “one-man-dog” obedience and goodness.
Like Lad, he was never struck or otherwise punished; and never needed such punishment. He and Laddie were dear friends, from the moment they met. And each was the only grown male dog with which the other would consent to be on terms of cordiality.
Bruce had a melancholy dignity, behind which lurked an elusive sense of fun.
For his children—he had many dozens of them—he felt an eternal disgust; even aversion. Let visitors start to walk towards the puppy-yards, and Bruce at once lowered his head and tail and slunk away. When a group of the puppies, out for a gallop, caught sight of their sire and bore down gleefully upon him, Bruce would stalk off in utter gloom. Too chivalric to hurt or even to growl at any of the scrambling oncoming babies, he would none the less take himself out of their way with all possible haste.
But, on occasion, he could rise to a sense of his duties as a parent. As when one of the young dogs was left tied for a few minutes to a clothesline, three summers ago. The youngster gnawed the line in two and pranced merrily away on a rabbit hunt, dragging ten feet of rope with him.
When I came home and saw the severed clothesline, I knew what must be happening, somewhere out in the woods. The dangling rope was certain to catch in some bush or stump. And the puppy, in his struggles, would snarl himself inextricably. There, unless help should come, he must starve to death.