'Murphy': A Message to Dog Lovers

by Ernest Gambier-Parry

The philosopher tells us that we advance more surely by making mistakes than we do by lines more usually held to be right. Murphy took the former and apparently correct course, like others before him. The first real stride he made was thus in connection with an error, and it did him a world of good. It came about like this.

By way of preface—what can possibly be more irritating to a dog than sheep? Master and dog were coming home together, and were persistently mobbed by a party of a dozen. Both agreed that if any real pluck lay at the back of the attentions so freely bestowed, the view entertained of the proceedings might be somewhat modified. But both were well aware that there was nothing of the kind; that the bold front was a sham, that inquisitiveness was the origin of it all, and that funk in reality filled every one of those dozen hearts, however much their owners hustled forward or lifted up their heads and stamped.

How long would Murphy stand such gross effrontery? That was the question of the moment. So far, he had followed close to heel, with his tail down—though it is fair to him to say that latterly he had come to carry it erect. Possibly the sheep approached closer than any dog of spirit could endure, or one frightened the others and they began to run away. In a moment it was all over; the sheep had turned tail, and Murphy was after them, and had even found his voice.

The field was one of five-and-thirty acres, so there was plenty of room for him to turn them this way and that. To continue calling was, of course, useless. Time was better employed in taking a grip of the feelings and deciding on what was to be done. To make matters worse, the farmer himself was seen to be viewing the proceedings from a distant gateway. He would undoubtedly expect the law to be carried out, and dogs that ran sheep to be either broken to better ways or shot. It made no difference that the sheep were not his but “on tack” in his fields. What was the lot of these might be the lot of his another day. A thrashing was, therefore, now imperative. But how was this to be administered, when the only weapon was a shooting-stick, and the site was the middle of a large grass field? The best thing to do was to sit down, and be patient.

A part of the dog’s education had already been that he was to stop when his master stopped, and when the latter sat or lay down he was to come in. He had already responded in a small way to this training, and now he dropped his games with the sheep, left them, and came slowly back. He guessed that something was about to happen by his master’s solemn silence, and therefore approached with caution. It is never necessary in the case of ordinary offences and with ordinary dogs to be over severe with the stick—if a suitable one is handy, which it generally is not. A lecture and a shaking does as well, with a tap or two with a stick to show it is there. Provoking as the incident had been, this last is what Murphy duly received. The shooting-stick was much brandished in the air, and the dog called “Murder,” long and loudly. The delinquent was evidently catching it, judged the farmer; and he waved his arm and disappeared.

That was gained, any way: what about the dog? He had learnt what the rattle of the shooting-stick meant. He had also learnt that sheep were to be suffered in their stupid, irritating ways, and not chased. For a short while he took the matter to heart, being always woefully depressed when he even thought he had done wrong. But he soon recovered, and showed contrition in the winning way he had now begun to acquire—by coming up shyly from behind, and endeavouring to reach the fingers of his master’s hand.

The whole episode proved a success—from the man’s point of view, at least; in the case of the dog and the sheep no doubt it was coloured. Murphy had certainly acquired confidence by what had happened, just as a boy may, when he gets his first fall out hunting, and finds himself less hurt than he fancied would be the case in turning a somersault. Added to this, there was also gain in the fact that from that day forward he was immaculate with sheep, as will be seen.

Though Murphy was quickly judged as one who had been “born good,” and continued to be so regarded all his life, it is not to be supposed that he never transgressed, and thereby never incurred the punishment of a shaking. He was canine, as men are human; the two terms are equally synonymous with error, and faults, one way or the other, have to suffer correction. But in his case, the faults of which he was guilty were almost invariably confined to those of a petty and irritating description—exhibition of nervousness when there was no need, failure in the recognition of his name, lifelong inability to get out of the way of traffic on the roads, which made walks along roads very rare occurrences indeed, and many others of a like nature. Had it been otherwise, where would have been the training for both? On the one hand, there was always the ideal of enabling this dog to regain confidence in the human being, and making him the merry, happy fellow he had once been; on the other, there was the test as to whether this could be done without loss of hope in the face of repeated and almost continuous failure, and without the exhibition of irritability or loss of temper when provocations arose at first a score of times on every day.

Of his pluck there was never the slightest question. Again and again he would charge, for instance, into a quickset hedge when his nose told him a rat was there, and come out a mass of thorns, and with the rat fixed to his lip or cheek. He would then simply knock the rat off with a fore-paw without whimpering, and hold it down that some one else might come and kill it, for he seemed unable, or unwilling, to kill anything himself. Then, again, he habitually went straight up to the most savage of dogs—several times at the risk of his life, in the case of well-known fighters twice the size of himself—and by his manner or his charm invariably came away harmless.

He could never be made to understand—and it is the cause of shame now to realise the irritation that this caused on many an occasion—that all the dogs in the world, any more than other inhabitants of the world, are not necessarily our friends, or intend even to be friendly; and that dogs, like those about them, are frequently in the habit of quarrelling and rending one another without regard to feelings, and with little of the spirit of give and take that life and a common lot might elsewhere be said to demand.