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

by Frances E. Slaughter

We know that long ages of companionship with man have made the dog our fellow in sympathy and intelligence in a way that is impossible to any other member of the brute creation. Yet even he has not lost the marks of the old wild life that was once his. But it is a long step back from the inmate of our twentieth century home, where the surroundings given by advancing civilisation and moral development have the marks of ages of progress, to the primeval conditions of the life of our favourite’s ancestors. Far be it from me to dogmatise as to what those old conditions of life were. They are lost in the obscurity of the past, and we listen with respect when men of science tell us of the conditions that obtained in bygone ages, though not always with entire acceptance of the inferences they draw.

Few, however, will dispute the probability that the ancestor of the dog—wolf, jackal, or of whatever type he may have been—lived in a pack and thus had the aids of community life to train his intelligence and fit him for the struggle of existence among his fellows. It is only the question of his mental development that concerns us here, and we have authority for saying that a higher development of intelligence obtains among the members of a community than among those who in solitary freedom meet the dangers and fight the difficulties of life without such help from others of their kind.

In the study of jackals, of wolves and of hounds that hunt in packs, we see the clearest traces of the old life lived in the forests and the plains, where man had not as yet entered into a struggle with nature on his own account. We find now, as in the past, evidence of the sympathy that is at the root of all social instincts, governing the life of the community. Without the loyalty to a recognised code of conduct and morals, that may be said to be the foundation of social life, no body of animals living a common life could survive. Where there is community of interests there must be a common working for the general good, or the band will be scattered and fall a prey to its enemies. But the sympathy that is quick to warn of coming trouble and give assistance when misfortune has fallen, to help the weak and to encourage the wavering, links the members of a society together in the strongest possible bonds. It is this that will strengthen them collectively to withstand attacks against which individually they will have no chance. Such a tie must have enabled the ancestors of our domestic dogs to preserve life and to hand on a position in the tribal company to their offspring.

The training the dog had received as a member of the pack, when man rough and uncivilised as he then was, became his companion in the struggle for life, was the source of his value to the human. In hunting, in the guarding of his master’s property, the dog found his place in the life of his owner, and since those early days of association in the wilds, the rise and progress of the human race has marked the gradual amelioration of the condition of the dog. It is sounding a high note, perhaps, to say that the history of the development of canine intelligence has advanced step by step with the history of the civilisation of the human race. Yet I venture to think that the facts bear out the statement.

In the rude life of our forbears the dog was primarily valuable in the daily quest for food, and as the conditions of life were rough and uncertain for his master, so also were they for him. Yet the dog had reached another stage of life from the days when in the primeval pack he had roved the forests untouched by the influence of man. Obedience to the customs of the canine clan had given place to the service and companionship of the human master, and from this point his history is closely woven with the fortunes of the human race.

Not only were his speed and scenting powers made use of in the chase, but his courage and fidelity were recognised and valued in the protection of his master’s home. A step further in the course of the domestication of the dog, and we find that his mental development is subject to varying influences as his powers are used primarily as a guardian or as a hunter. The sheep dog and the guardian of the house are brought more directly under the influence of their owner’s home life, while the dog used chiefly for hunting remains more under the conditions of his primeval state. Yet the hunting dogs, of which the hounds of to-day are the representatives, were also subject to the will and to a certain extent followed the rise in fortune of their masters. It is among these members of the canine race that we must look for the community life that is the modern rendering of their old tribal conditions.

With the spread of civilisation, and above all with the rise of Christianity, the dog came gradually to be recognised as having claims, not only on his master’s forbearance, but as possessing rights of his own in the common life of master and servant. The faithful creature who showed such wonderful aptitude in guarding his master’s flock in the field, and was such a sympathetic and intelligent companion in his home, had a claim to be treated with the kindness and consideration that was due from his owner to all—whether man or beast—who gave him faithful service.

We have only to compare the position of the dog among Mohammedans or Hindoos in the present day with the conditions of his life in England and America to see what Christianity has done for him indirectly. He is saved from needless suffering, tended in sickness, and housed and fed so that his physical and mental powers can reach their highest point of development. He thus attains a far higher level in the life history of his race than is possible to his half-starved, cowed, and miserable brothers in Eastern lands.

To the Mohammedan he is an unclean creature, and by him is treated with a disregard of the amenities of intercourse between man and beast that goes far to make him the outcast in mind and manners that he is in the conditions of his outward life. The tumultuous troop of pariahs that rush out from an Indian village, to the discomfort of the English rider enjoying his morning gallop, show in appearance and disposition marks of the neglect in which their life from its earliest day is passed. With the Hindoo the dog is safe from active ill treatment, and while in health and strength may share the conditions of his master’s life. But when sickness, or accident, or old age overtakes him, not a hand will be lifted in his service. Though some simple, timely aid might save the poor brute nameless suffering, and even give him years in which to serve his master in the future as he has done in the past, his Hindoo owner will show the fatalistic indifference to his sufferings that is one of the marks of the followers of his strange creed. The dog’s time has come, and the man who will vex his soul if inadvertently he crush the life from the tiniest of creeping insects, will show a perfect disregard of the claims of the animal who has served him with all the love and fidelity of his heart and the strength of the best years of his life.

But in Western lands where Christian ethics have put the finishing touch to the gentler influences of a progressive state of civilisation, the dog’s rights as a living, sentient being are regarded as they never have been in the course of the world’s history. True, there are bright spots in the past as there are direful blemishes in the present, that on the one hand bring discredit on the vaunted progress of human development, and on the other throw the glamour of a strange acceptance of moral responsibility to the dumb creation on the men of far-off days, but these are the exceptions that go to prove the truth of the general statement.