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

by Frances E. Slaughter

Jack, of fighting memory, was remarkable for the self-restraint and generosity that not all the brutal associations of his early life had been able to kill. Though he had given an intelligent response to his training, and understood that from his first owner’s point of view fighting was a business and not a pastime, he took no unholy pleasure in rousing up an antagonist. Rather, as he understood the grim realities of action, he shrank from provoking a combat, from which, even with the honours of war, he would take away many a wound as an unpleasant reminder. In fact, his experience had taught him to look on war from the standpoint of the soldier who knows that he takes his life in his hand every time he goes into action. And Jack had the marks of a true soldier in his relations to his superiors and his fellows. Obedient, staunch to the death, he would fight to the end, but he must have an antagonist worthy of his powers. An amateur was no match for him, and if in wanton play or ungoverned temper the unskilled fighter attacked him, Jack gave him a lesson for his presumption, but tempered his punishment to the powers of resistance arrayed against him. He was loyal to his friends, had a tender sympathy with suffering, and showed his gratitude for a good home in peaceful surroundings by a vigilant guardianship of his mistress.

The character of each dog as we study it stands out in plain relief, as the expression of that inner life which appeals to our own experience at every turn. To me it seems a monstrous thing to suppose that the care for his own life and those committed to his individual guardianship which the dog shows, can be any other than the visible expression of his consciousness of an ego, endowed with powers and duties which only he, in his own person, can perform. That he has a clear idea of responsibility is manifest by his conduct, and why should this be whittled away from its obvious significance till we are asked to believe that the dog’s behaviour is to be attributed to quite other motives than those that govern our own actions?

We know the strange and often inexplicable intuition that is shown by a child whose powers are as yet undeveloped in the choice of a friend or guardian. He seems to know by unerring instinct the one, among a number of friends, in whose heart he will find a response to the cravings of his own young affections. He shows his confidence in, and a clinging dependence on, the chosen one that bring their own reward. The same intuition was shown by my own Skye terrier when he was first brought to my house. The friend then staying with me, to whom he was given, is a true dog-lover, and she accepted the care of the shy little stranger with all her accustomed gentleness and consideration. It was to her that Gubbins looked for the first caresses that greeted him in his new home. He was looked upon, as indeed he was, as her property for the time being. She had no dog of her own with her, and Gubbins slept in her room at night and had all the privileges of a favoured friend.

On the other hand, I had two dogs almost always with me, and from one of them I was constantly receiving the most demonstrative tokens of affection. I refrained studiously from taking notice of Gubbins in the early days, partly from the fear of exciting the jealousy of the older inhabitants of the house, and partly because I did not wish to have my affection enlisted by the wild, shy little mortal, whose life seemed an unending round of rude shocks to his too sensitive nervous system.

Yet underneath all this there were causes at work which could not have been known to Gubbins, and yet which his conduct seemed to show he had appreciated almost at the first glance. His mistress had a favourite dog at home, whose rule could never have been disputed by another. She had nothing to give Gubbins but the temporary care and kindness that his forlorn condition demanded. On the other hand, the dogs I had then were not, and could never have been, more than friends of moderate claims. Only one indeed belonged to me, the other being the bulldog whose tragic outbreak I have recorded elsewhere. My own Basset hound, picturesque and deep-tongued, and pleasant to look on as she was, was one of the few canine idiots I have ever known. She seemed to be absolutely devoid of intelligence, and though on the show bench and elsewhere she would always give me an exuberantly loving welcome that was very impressive to strangers, I knew that to any one of her friends she would give an equally demonstrative greeting. Even a chance visitor to the house would, as likely as not, be distinguished in the same way. As Rica had no discrimination in her affections, so she had no power of responding to mental training. Every day of the week saw the same lesson of some simple matter of conduct given to her, and each day she would offend in the same way, not from obstinacy or love of wrong-doing, but because all memory of correction had passed completely from her mind. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen with my dogs, to watch Rica take up her position in the winter close—too close, as she ought to have known from reiterated warnings—to a blazing fire, and there, sitting up with her great wrinkled head nodding in sleep, enjoy the warmth till she threatened to roll over into the fireplace. The blankness that looked out from her clear brown eyes, the lack of the nameless expression that speaks from a dog’s every movement and look, were utterly wanting to her, and told their own tale to the onlooker.

Such a dog was not one to engage her owner’s affections, and it has always seemed as if Gubbins must have had some strange intuition of the conditions that obtained among his new friends, in attaching himself to me as he did. In spite of my studied aloofness and the presence of my constant canine attendants, he showed a preference for my company from the first, and never rested till he had made good his right to a place in my bedroom. Yet in so doing he was thrown with the other dogs, whose noisy exuberance of spirits were, in his then state of cowed repression, an obvious trial to his nerves, and he would shrink away terrified into a corner at any outbreak from them. With my friend he would have had his own quiet place in her room, without shocks from stronger nerved companions; and everything seemed to point to his responding with gratitude to the advances she made to him. But Gubbins would have none of them; and as those who have read his life know, he won his future home by the determined selection he made.

While a tender living up to his position as a member of a small home party, lightened by moments of expansion when fun and mischief made a veritable child of him, was the distinguishing characteristic of Gubbins’s life, we find the same dominant note of personal character in each of the other dogs’ histories. With Bruce it was a strong sense of social obligations and a finished ease of manner in fulfilling them. An independent weighing of cause and effect in the case of his own requirements and in the carrying out of his plans was also seen in him. Of the matter of his independence in his mysterious visit to the railway station to meet his master, when the latter was expected by a train and route he seldom used, I have nothing further to say. I have elsewhere vouched for the truth of the facts as I have given them, but the explanation of his conduct I must leave to wiser heads than mine.

In Bandy a wonderful mastery of, and association of himself with, the complicated machinery of the daily routine of a large public school is the prevailing note. Times and seasons were known to him in a marvellous way, and in the many interests into which he threw himself with all the ardour of his nature he showed the wonderful development of his mind that was the result of his intimate fellowship with a large body of humans. The strength of his conviction as to his rights as a member of a body of free-born Englishmen is shown as well by his act of vengeance on his master when he thought he was unfairly treated as by the manner of his tragic death. Freedom to the free, was the motto Bandy lived up to in his life, and defended with his latest breath.

Jack, of less subtle mind, had the fearless outlook on life that is characteristic of the good soldier. A stern determination to do his duty, obedience to orders, whether of attack or restraint, and an open-hearted loyalty were the surprising results of a training that might well have left him a brutal exponent of his brutalised owners’ methods of training. But here we have a case of a good natural disposition unspoiled by early association with vicious men. As Jack was untouched by the evil of his masters’ methods, he, with simple faith in, and obedience rendered to the orders given, escaped the degradation of those who, with the free exercise of higher powers, were responsible for his early exploits.

A dainty enjoyment of the good things of this life, and an irresponsible method of attaining his ends, were the leading traits of Jet’s life. His appearance and manners aiding him, he took full advantage of the opportunities the circumstances of his life afforded him for the carrying out of his simple creed. His horizon was limited, and to Jet he himself was the god, whose smile or frown made or unmade the world in which he lived.