But there are so many points in connection with which, as it must seem to dogs, our behaviour is inscrutable. One may take the case of baths, which must daily mystify them. As I put forth to the bath-room, I can nearly always recognise in my dogs some artificiality of manner, an assumption of indifference, that they are far from feeling. They regard me with bright, wary eyes, and remain in their baskets, still as birds on eggs. “She goes,” they say, “to that revolting and unnecessary torture, known as Washy-washy. Why she inflicts it upon herself is known to Heaven alone. For our part, let us keep perfectly quiet, nor tempt the incalculable impulses that rule her in these matters.”
I have never been addicted to dachshunds, but I must make mention of one, Koko; incomparable as a lady of fashion, as a fag at lawn tennis, and as a thief. She also had a gift, not without its uses, of biting beggars. Her owner, my cousin Doctor Violet Coghill, who was in Koko’s time a medical student, had a practice in dogbites more extended than even her enthusiasm desired. Once, when a patient came to be dressed and compensated, Koko was collared, chained, and, to make assurance doubly sure, tucked under the doctor’s left arm. Thence, during the inspection of the wound, she stretched a neck like a snake, and bit the patient again. No dinner-table was safe from her depredations. “Koko is around the coasts!” parlourmaids have been heard to cry, flying to their dining-rooms, as merchant-brigs might fly to harbour upon a rumour of Paul Jones. She and another, my sister’s Max, were the first dachshunds in Carbery. I have heard Max discussed by little boys in Skibbereen.
“’Tis a daag!”
“’Tis not!”
“’Tis!”
“’Tis not! ’Tis a Sarpint!”
Another and more sophisticated critic decided that it was “a little running sofa.” But this was intentionally facetious; the serpent theory expressed a genuine conviction.
It was at one time said of my family, generally, that we were kept by a few dogs for their convenience and entertainment, and later there was a period when amongst ourselves and our cousins we could muster about fourteen, in variety, mainly small dogs. We decided to have a drag-hunt, and in order to ensure some measure of success—(I ask all serious Hound-men to turn away their eyes from beholding iniquity)—I desired my huntsman, an orderly-minded Englishman, to bring Rachel and Admiral to run the drag.
“Oh, Master, you wouldn’t ask them pore ’ounds to do such a thing?” said G.
I said I would; that they were old, and steady; in short, I apologised, but was firm.