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

by Frances E. Slaughter

“La mas racional”—the one that reasons best.

THE nearest approach to the old tribal conditions of the ancestors of the dog we find in kennel life at the present day. Here we have the struggle for mastery, the sense of personal rights, the love and jealousy, sympathy and hate, cleverness and stupidity, that find their counterpart in our own social life, as they did in the communities of wolves and jackals that ranged the forests in bygone days. In a kennel of hounds we have the strongly marked individualities of character that divide off each one from the other, and give endless scope for study to those who have the patience and sympathy to devote to the task. It was in India, where many an early morning ride after jackal lives in my memory, that I first realised this wonderful individuality of hounds. The master of the pack with which I hunted one winter was a friend of mine, and often on non-hunting days the ride with which my day in the plains always began was in company with the master, who made a point of taking his hounds out for exercise himself. I soon came to know the hounds by sight, and heard from the master’s lips of their several traits and peculiarities. The knowledge gave me an added pleasure in watching their performances in the field; and what little I have of hound knowledge I owe in the first instance to this study of a scratch pack that was remarkable for neither looks nor symmetry, as these are understood in England to-day. Yet uneven as they were in size, and rough as many were in appearance, there was some of the best foxhound blood of our English kennels in their veins, and to each individual hound the very best of training was given. This was done by a careful study of the capacity, temper, and disposition of each hound in the pack, such as only an enthusiast in the matter of hound work would bring to bear on the subject.

The social life of the ancestors of our dogs was forced upon them by the necessity of protection against common enemies, and the need of mutual assistance in the capture of prey. In this life each member had to find and keep his own allotted place. The competition that is one of the marks by which each member of a community shows the best or worst of which he is capable, and finds his level accordingly, was not absent from the life of the dog’s forebears. Each dog must take the place he was fitted for in the common life, and doubtless that assigned to him he often won by fighting for it. For the dog is a quarrelsome animal, and Dr. Watts was not wrong in his natural history when he wrote of the “delight of dogs to bark and bite.” We may note, too, that he puts the greater and commoner pleasure, as we still see it exercised to-day, first; but fighting, among animals as among men, is a necessity of existence to the community while the conditions of life remain what they are.

This quarrelsomeness which we regret in our favourites, and that is a real source of danger in the kennels, is a survival of the old conditions, when each dog tried to work himself up to the position of master or leader of the pack, and, failing this, had perforce to take a lower place. Thus the leader, to whom the rest of the community looked for guidance, would be the strongest or the most capable of the tribe, or one that combined both these characteristics. We have only to watch a dog fight to-day to see that the combatants exercise a certain strategy. No doubt the first dog that learned to double his paws under him, and thus protect a vulnerable part, gained an advantage over a less intelligent, though it might be a heavier-built, rival. For one of the first methods of the canine tactician is to bite through the sensitive paw of his opponent; and the huntsman knows that if fighting in his kennels is not quelled promptly and sternly he will have many of his hounds lamed from this cause.

But even in kennel life, where there is such abundant material for the student of canine character, we only have the old conditions of primeval dog life faintly shadowed. Though to a great extent the dog in the kennels is living a social life among his fellows, the ruler to whom he looks is not a leader in the old sense, but a human master. In his earlier days, too, he is placed more or less in the conditions that obtain with our domestic dogs. When only a few months old he finds a home, it may be at a farmhouse, or at a neighbouring landowner’s, where he becomes the playmate and pet of the children of the house. If a hotel or the local butcher’s shop receives him, the puppy makes friends with the men and boys about the place, and often develops a special affection for his temporary master. In any case he lives the life of a free, and for the most part a petted, member of a household; and when he takes his place in the kennels he shows all the symptoms of grief for the good things he has lost and dislike for the restraints of his new life that a pampered boy will when he has his first taste of school discipline. No one who has seen a young hound, frightened, miserable, and homesick, sitting by himself in a corner of what for the time is to him a hated prison, can doubt his suffering. He has indeed an almost comic expression of misery on his naturally rather solemn countenance. He has not yet found his level in his new surroundings; he has lost his old friends and found no one to take their place; the joys of hunting days, which will go far to counterbalance the strictness of kennel discipline, are unknown to him. Henceforth he is to share in the social life of his fellows, in which all are bound by a common interest to a common occupation, broken only by interludes of companionship with man. He has therefore reversed the conditions of his life up to this point, in which companionship with man has been interspersed with interludes of society with other dogs.

He has now to conquer and keep the place in the pack that will hereafter be his by general consent. If he is masterful and resourceful, he will be deferred to, and, it may be, the warmest corner on the bench will be conceded to him when time and experience have come to aid him in the competition of life. In the matter of food the huntsman’s care will see that he gets no more than his due share, but we know how at the trough some hounds have always to be restrained, while others, who as a matter of course are ready to take the second place, have to be encouraged to secure their rights.

This competition, which is an integral part of community life, must, as it seems to me, give to each dog a consciousness of his own personality. His own interests and attainments are a thing apart from those of his fellows. In however dim a degree, he has a sense of personal rights and property, and recognises that a higher position can be won for himself individually by intelligence and courage combined.

But while in each dog will be seen the evidence of his own natural gifts, and he will show affection, sympathy, intelligence, or, on the other hand, will be morose, selfish, or incapable of striking out a line of action for himself, the general character of the pack will receive its impress from the hands of the huntsman. If he is at once firm and sympathetic in the government of the kennel, his hounds will be obedient and affectionate, and in their work will display an eagerness and anxiety to do their best that will be a tribute to the excellence of his rule.

Nowhere have we a more fertile field for tracing the effects of heredity than in a kennel. I am not concerned here with the many interesting questions that arise on the physiological side of the subject, but leaving make, shape, and speed as beyond our scope, we may confine ourselves to the consideration of mental characteristics. These do not always make their appearance at once, for the character of the dog, like that of man, develops with time. Many hounds do not show either their faults or their virtues till their second season. One experienced huntsman, indeed, used to say that he never knew what his hounds were going to do till their third season. While some hounds will enter at once, and never do wrong from the first day they go out cub-hunting, others can scarcely be induced to take an interest in the chase before their second season, while others again are never of any use at all, and do not seem to have any taste for hunting.

But from the first days of their return to the kennel, hounds show that they have a curious sympathy with those who are bound to them by the ties of relationship. Now in the old tribal pack we may suppose that these blood ties would be numerous, and that their recognition would tend to give a coherence to the community life by cementing the bonds of a common affection. It is no uncommon sight with us to see mother and daughter, father and son, running together in one of our packs, and while the old hounds take the lead, the young ones look to them for guidance and are quick to follow their example. This trait is strange when we consider that parents and children have seen nothing of one another since the latter were sent out to walk. The young ones have had all their early impressions of life, which must have gone far in forming their own mental outlook, apart from their parents’ influence. Yet the family tie has not been broken by the separation, though it is not possible that the young hounds at least can remember their elders. In the case of the mother we cannot say how far maternal affection may bridge the gulf. That she remembers her young long after their dependence on her has ceased, seems clear from a case of which I can vouch for the truth. A mother who had been separated from her puppies in the ordinary way would, long after there was a possibility of purely physical reasons coming into play, always trot down to the kennels immediately she was let out, and lick with affection the four little black noses that were thrust between the bars at her approach.