“To this day it is deeply revered by all the villagers around, and the story of that faithful dog is often repeated to show how intelligent and true a dog can be.”
Yes; faithful, true, loving to the death, understanding our moods and sorrows, and sympathetic in all the troubles as well as the joys of life, the dog has proved himself to be. Shall not our recognition of his many virtues be at least on a plane with the simple faith in his powers of heart and mind that the little hill temple is a witness to, among the untutored natives of the wild tribes of Northern India?
XIV
“Are we devils? Are we men?
Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again!
He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers
Sisters, Brothers—and the beasts whose pains are hardly less than ours.”
IF the foregoing studies of dog life make clear the right of a dog to be treated as a being whose powers of mind are nearly akin to our own, how should this affect our behaviour towards him? Not to pamper him, assuredly, and thus check the free exercise of his higher powers and qualities and encourage the selfishness and greed, the germs of which are to be found as well in canine as in human nature. The dog has his own place in the natural order of things, and our aim should be to give to the higher and better part of his nature the fullest development and training our powers enable us to do. When we hear of a lonely woman whose sole friend was her dog taking her own life in despair at her companion being reft from her, and brought to an untimely end, we pity her in that her views of life had been warped and distorted by the dreary loneliness of her lot. But apart from such an extreme example of putting our faithful little friend on a platform to which he has no right, there are many who might take to heart with advantage, both to themselves and to the animals under their care, the quaint indictment of an old writer: “These dogges are ... pretty, proper and fyne, and sought for to satisfie the delicatenesse of daintie dames’ ... wills, instruments of folly for them to play and dally withal, and tryfle away the treasure of time, to withdraw their mindes from more commendable exercises and to content their corrupted concupiscences with vain disport (a selly shift to shunne yrcksome ydlenesse).” As the book from which these words are taken is said to be the earliest one on dogs written in the English language, it shows that it is no new thing with us for women to err on the side of foolish spoiling of the intelligent creatures who are worthy of a better fate.