The fact is Raggety’s ears are very interesting. Haven’t I told you about them before? He has one ear that stands up and one ear that flops down and never stands up. You can never remember whether it is the right ear that stands up and the left ear that lies down, or the left ear that stands up and the right ear that lies down. Which is it? Well, I myself after knowing Raggety intimately for many years do not feel quite sure!
Those ears cause an endless amount of surmise and conjecture. A person sits in my room enjoying stereotyped conversation and invariably says, “What do you suppose makes one of Raggety’s ears stand up and the other flop over?” Now here are the three theories with which I invariably entertain my questioner in stereotyped form. The first is my own theory, which is that when Raggety was a baby-puppy, his mother or one of his baby-brothers bit him through the ear, just in play and broke the muscles. But when I once advanced this theory to a Doctor-friend of Raggety, he scoffed at it.
“Oh, no,” said Raggety’s Doctor-friend, “muscles don’t give out in that way. It is paralysis. The dog was kicked, probably in the head, once upon a time and that side is paralyzed and so he can not raise his ear.” This sounded professional and so thereafter I quoted this theory. But when I told this to a dog-trainer who observed and of course commented on the famous mismatched ears, again such theory was scorned as unprofessional.
“Why,” laughed the dog-trainer, “if the dog was kicked, his brain injured and paralysis occurred, he would have had all that side paralyzed, not just an ear. That isn’t it at all! That dog had a prick-eared father and a lop-eared mother,—or the other way round,—and so he just took one ear from each. That’s no paralysis!”
So you can choose your theory after you look at Raggety’s picture. You see I do not know which is right—do you?
Raggety’s Tail
Yes, it’s a very sore subject with me, though Raggety is entirely indifferent. His tail is not pretty, indeed, it is rather ugly. It’s too long and it isn’t very fluffy and he carries it arching over his back, which makes it look twice as long as it is. Some rude boys once even pretended that they thought his name was Rag-tail, instead of Raggety! Yes, decidedly his tail is his weakest spot, a sort of Achilles’s heel. I never talk much about tails before him, for as I say his tail is a very sensitive subject.
Nevertheless, Raggety’s tail is beautifully responsive to suggestion! It is an emotional tail, reflecting the wearer’s innermost feelings. Indeed it seems as though sometimes it would wag itself off. And some of his girl friends say that it is a “pinned-on tail” and does not belong to him, it is so ready and waggy whenever it has the least encouragement. But his tail is not beautiful, and were it not that this is a true story of a truly dog, I should not even mention Raggety’s tail.
He’s a molasses dog, with butter-scotch ears, chocolate-cream eyes, licorice nose, pink peppermint tongue, and teeth like the little candies that come in Christmas tree cornucopias. “But,” said one of the little girls, “isn’t his tail butter-scotch too?” “Oh, no,” I hurried to reply, “it’s molasses, only it’s darker because it is not pulled as much, for we never pull tails!”