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

by Frances E. Slaughter

BOSKY

Yet this little dog, whose brain power is of the smallest, has a clear idea of right and wrong. It is the custom of the maid to take a cup of Benger’s food to her mistress’s bedroom after the latter has gone up to bed. Bosky, who by that time is already in the place where she passes the night, always has a few spoonfuls given her in the saucer as soon as her mistress has finished. One day when I was staying in the house, my hostess came with me to my room and stayed talking for some time. In the meantime the maid had put the cup in her room as usual, and then gone away. When my friend was leaving me, a startled scream from Bosky echoed through the silent house as soon as my bedroom door was opened. The little thing had been lying on the mat outside, and directly her mistress appeared she opened her lips with a cry of terror, and fled downstairs into the darkness of the front hall.

When her mistress entered her room she saw what had happened. The tempting cup had been standing on a table beside the bed. Its contents had long since grown cold, and Bosky had taken her share from the top of the cup instead of waiting for her usual portion. But repentance had followed swiftly on the crime, and she fled from the room and took up her station at my door, to put herself out of reach of further temptation. The most striking point about her conduct was that, though nothing but a few words of reproach came as a punishment for her theft, Bosky would never again be left alone in the room with the cup of Benger. She generally came with her mistress into my room; but if she had gone straight to bed when we came upstairs, she would always jump up when the maid came in with the cup, and take refuge by my door.

Such conduct seems to show, as I have said, an appreciation of wrong-doing as being contrary to the line of conduct that ought to be followed. For, though in this particular case the dog could not have feared punishment at the hands of her mistress, she yet showed undoubted terror at her theft being found out. It is hard to know what thought could have been present in her mind. When we see a little street Arab instinctively lift his arm across his face to ward off a possible blow at any unexpected or sudden word from a stranger, the action tells us a pitiful tale of the child’s experience. But if in the dog there is no such individual experience to cause his fright, may not the sense of impending misfortune following a lapse from virtue be an instance of tribal memory? In the history of his forbears, punishment has followed swiftly on wrong-doing. Has it become an instinct of the race that this should be so?

Even this, however, does not explain the sense of wrong-doing that is at the root of his conduct. In the case of the terrier, she might well have looked on a portion of her mistress’s food as being her right; for she knew she had it given to her unfailingly. Yet she recognised that she might not take it herself, and the enjoyment of the coveted dainty was soon clouded by a sense of guilt.

From my own point of view, and with a full recognition of the part that training and tribal memory may play in the ordering of the dog’s conduct, I think that such an instance shows the dawning of a moral sense that gives the dog the very highest claims to humane and considerate treatment at our hands. Although to some this will appear too high a line to take, we can but feel that whatever the solution may be, it brings us face to face with something in the dog’s mind that causes him to act in a manner altogether worthy of a human.

And when we turn to the passionate devotion a dog is capable of, we again find things that are hard to fathom. The most striking case, in some ways, that I have met with is that of a clever little cross-bred terrier. This little dog, Jimmy by name, belonged to one of the daughters of the house, where the father was a confirmed invalid and the mother in delicate health. The latter took little notice of the dog, though she was kind and gentle to him, as she was to all animals. When the master of the house died suddenly his widow was quite broken down with grief, and nothing that her daughters or her medical attendant could do would rouse her from the state of collapse into which she fell. In her fragile state it seemed that the shock would kill her. But Jimmy was struck by her suffering, and he showed such passionate distress at her misery that the gentle sufferer gained self-control as she strove to comfort him.

From that time, during the remaining years of her life, Jimmy never left her. He would even turn on his mistress if she offered to remove him from her mother’s side. When his chosen friend was confined to her bed, as she often was for weeks at a time, Jimmy would not be separated from her, and if he found the bedroom door shut against him, he would fling himself against it and beat it with his paws in a fury, till it was opened. Then, after only one day when the invalid was not able to take her usual place in her family circle, she died, and Jimmy seemed instantly to recognise what had happened. He was still faithful to his visits to her room in the days that followed, but instead of demanding admittance he would lie down and quietly wait to be let in. When he was admitted there was no mad rush to the bed, but he crept in and took his place with the watchers beside the coffin. What happened during those silent watches, I must give in the simple words of Jimmy’s mistress. “As I used to sit with Jimmy on my knee in the darkened room, he seemed to be following something I could not see with wistful eyes. Naturally you will think it was a fly on the wall, or some such thing that Jimmy’s gaze was following. But I assure you, I tried every test I could think of, and there was nothing. Yet the awe-stricken look in Jimmy’s eyes as they gazed out over the room, I can never forget. How much I would have given to see what he saw!”

What made Jimmy’s conduct the more remarkable was that he had never before been known to keep quiet for any length of time together. He was an active, excitable little dog, full of strength and movement, and giving play to his enjoyment of life with noisy exuberance of spirits. But after the death of his chosen friend he fretted silently and with such faithful memory that his mistress at one time feared she would lose him. In time, however, he turned to her for consolation, and the loving care that had always been his was now intensified by the memory of his love for one whom his owner mourned deeply.[9]