"The One" Dog and "The Others": A Study of Canine Character

by Frances E. Slaughter

In matters where Gubbins was on known ground his courage was beyond dispute and often brought him into peril. No dog was too large or too strong to call forth hostile demonstrations, if he happened to excite his ire. I well remember the horror with which, on hearing the well-known rush and growl that signalised Gubbins’s dislike of another dog, I turned to see the ridiculous little creature hanging on to the nose of a huge St. Bernard. With one angry toss of his mighty head the larger dog could have broken the spine of his tormentor. Happily the monster seemed too astonished at the onslaught of the hairy mass to do anything beyond give a very gentle swaying motion of the head, which swung Gubbins’s long body from side to side; for even hanging as the latter was at full length, his hind limbs were well off the ground, and he must have made one of his marvellous springs to fasten on the head as he did. Presently his teeth loosened and he dropped from his perilous perch, and he certainly owed his life to the remarkable gentleness of his victim.

Before Gubbins had walked off his excess of spirits in exercise he often gave these mad rushes, sometimes, I grieve to say, at humans. Any unsavoury specimen of the genus tramp always roused his mischief, and so, alas! did any gentle, fragile looking old lady or gentleman who could be depended on to receive his onslaught with a sufficient display of terror to make it worth while. Many were the scrapes from which he was not always rescued with the honours of war, and countless were the apologies made on his behalf. But after his maddest exploit the absurd little bundle of hair would come meekly to my feet, and generally by his very appearance disarm the sufferers. At such a moment caresses from the stranger’s hand were suffered with deceptive meekness, and were evidently taken as the necessary consequence of the previous joy. That the loud bark which would have fitted a dog ten times his size, and the sudden rush at the heels of a passing stranger, were sufficiently alarming, is clear, and a leather lead was soon fastened promptly to his collar whenever a human approached who long experience had taught me was one likely to be singled out by Gubbins as a vent for his excitement. His teeth never came into play, and this showed it was simply the fun of the thing that appealed to him, and not the hostile feeling that often prompted his attacks on fellow dogs.

Gubbins was the most humanly intelligent of all the dogs I have ever owned, and so far as his powers of mind went they appealed perfectly to the same level of expression of our own. While his trust and love were unwavering, his sympathy with anything in the shape of suffering or sorrow was undoubted. He would never leave me of his own free will, if he knew I was in trouble, though it could only have been by the tone of my voice that he discovered there was anything amiss. In the case of physical illness it was the same, and he would lie for hours on the foot of my bed, to which on these occasions he always “asked” to be permitted to jump.

The highest exercise of intelligence he ever showed was prompted by his love, and the amount of reasoning power that led to the successful carrying out of his stratagem shows what a narrow boundary there is between the highest efforts of the animal mind and those where human intelligence begins. I was suffering at the time from malaria, a legacy from a fairly long sojourn in India, and it was decreed by the friend who had taken charge of my sick-room that Gubbins was not to be allowed to disturb me. This lady, who was herself one of Gubbins’s most faithful friends, and was regarded by him with the warmest affection, told him after breakfast that he was not to come to me. That he fully understood what she said he showed by the dejected way in which he turned from her and crawled into his basket. The dining-room door was then shut on him, the back stairs were cut off by two heavy doors, and the passage from the top of the front stairs led past my friend’s bedroom before my own could be reached. From her bedroom, where the visitor sat writing with her door open, she could hear if any of the household should go into the dining room and set Gubbins at liberty. Besides, the flop, flop with which he always jumped from step to step of the stairs was clearly audible over all that part of the house, and this gave her confidence that he could not, in any case, get up without her hearing him.

But the dining-room door had not been fastened securely, and though it was a heavy oak door Gubbins managed to work it open. He then crept upstairs without a sound, and therefore in a very different way to that in which he usually mounted, stole past the open bedroom door, without betraying his presence, and putting his head close to the crack of my door gave one of his tiniest “asks.” So low was it that the watcher in the adjoining room heard nothing. At first I did not realise what had happened, and thought the voice reached me from a distance. But when a repetition came, the peculiar guarded sound of the faint call struck me, and at the third time I knew that by some means Gubbins had found his way to me. Entering into the spirit of the enterprise I opened the door softly and let him in. Without any of the usual manifestations of joy with which he was wont to greet me, he slipped past, and without waiting for the permission he always asked he sprang on the bed and curled himself round with a sigh of content. Then the drowsiness of fever overcame me, and I dozed for some hours, Gubbins also sleeping peacefully at my feet.

When at last my friend appeared, her relief at the sight of the hairy bundle on the bed was great. She told me that a search had been made for him all over the place, both indoors and out, as soon as it was discovered that he had escaped from the dining room. My room had not been thought of, as she felt certain he could not have come upstairs without being heard by her.

The amount of thought and caution exercised by the dog in carrying out his plan was remarkable. After making use of the great muscular strength of his sturdy forepaws in getting open the door of his prison, he had to get upstairs in a way that would not betray his presence. How he managed this we could not understand at the time, but years afterwards I saw him, when still weak from a severe illness, crawl up with a sideways, crab-like motion that explained what he had done to attain his ends in the heyday of his youth and strength. Placing his forepaws on the step above him he hitched his hind quarters up sideways, as his length could only thus be supported on the step, the depth of the stairs not being more than half his length. In this way there was no noise, but he still had to pass the watcher’s open door and convey the fact of his presence to me without letting her know. This accomplished successfully, he did not forget the need for caution when he had made good his entrance, but with a silent caress to my feet, and much wagging of the tail he left his usual mode of welcome severely alone, and, secure of my understanding and abetting, even took possession of one of his most prized rewards, only rarely accorded, by jumping on to the bed without the preliminaries of permission asked and granted that were always insisted on.

Here he showed a clear appreciation of the difficulties of carrying out his plan, and who shall say what was passing in his brain as he stole softly upstairs, passed his friend’s open door without disclosing his presence, and then, with all the precautions a human could have used, succeeded in communicating with me? Not less remarkably did he show his appreciation of the dangers so far conquered, when he exercised needful self-restraint in the expression of his greeting, and sank down at last with a sigh of content as he realised that all was well.

We are told by an eminent writer on the psychology of animals that the feeling of shame stands very high in the development of the emotional powers. In Gubbins its manifestation was very apparent. A flick of the handkerchief or a sharp word from me changed his whole aspect in a second, unless, indeed, the excitement of some forbidden pleasure had taken him in too firm a grip, and the enterprise on which he had started had to be carried out at all costs. But once the excitement passed, shame for his misdeed followed, and was shown in the same way a child will do in the same circumstances, up to the verge of speech. On one occasion, when I was from home all day, the maid in whose charge he had been left neglected to attend to him. The shame-faced little dog that met me on my return, and who put his head in my hand and cried softly, told me that some trouble had happened for which he was not to blame. In the same way when he was suffering from illness that caused occasional attacks of sickness, if by chance he was shut in a room when misfortune overtook him, although he knew he would not be punished for what was not his fault, he could not have shown more shame at the occurrence if he had dreaded chastisement.

Gubbins was a little gentleman in all his ways and feelings, his one lapse from propriety of manners being the rushes by which he helped to work off the excitement of his walks. He could always be depended on to preserve a neutral attitude towards any stranger staying in the house, if I performed a sort of introduction by putting my hand on my visitor’s arm and telling Gubbins that he or she was my friend. The same course had to be adopted with a new maid, and if a fearless pat was then given him by the new-comer, I knew that as long as that person was in the house there would be no trouble. But if, on the other hand, the slightest fear of him was shown, it behoved me to be careful, for if that maid came in his way when he was under the influence of any excitement such as that of his daily walk, there would be the same attempts to upset her equanimity by which he distinguished himself out of doors. No use of the teeth, but just the communication of his own excitement to one who his instincts told him could be relied on to respond. To secure the clatter of a fallen tray, or the headlong rush of a frightened maid downstairs, while he stood growling and barking at the top, as if ready to tear her in pieces, gave him, I grieve to say, under such circumstances, the liveliest enjoyment. But when he was shut up to reflect on his misdemeanours, by whatever process these were brought home to him, an unmistakable feeling of shame was displayed as soon as he had recovered his normal state.