King Charles Spaniel
First of all, we may note the fact that the friendly relations which dogs have become accustomed to form with men vary exceedingly in their range and activity. Perhaps in no other regard does the dog exhibit such distinctly human characteristics as in the way in which he meets the individuals of the mastering species. The gamut of their social relations with men is almost exactly parallel with our own. With from one to a dozen persons a dog may maintain an attitude of almost equally complete sympathy and mutual understanding. He may be on terms of acquaintanceship in varied degrees of familiarity with a few score others with whom he comes in frequent contact. Toward the rest of mankind he maintains a position of more or less complete distrust, which with experience may attain the indifference which men commonly show toward perfect strangers. If we observe a dog going along a much-frequented street, we may note that his relations to the people are substantially those which the folk have to each other. He shows as they do a certain consideration for the individuals he encounters, gives them their due place, and yet holds to his own. It is particularly noticeable that he avoids all contact with the other passers—in fact a dog has to be much beside himself with rage or fear, or insane from disease, before he will break those bounds of personality which civilization has set up to guide the conduct of life.
The social culture of dogs appears to have gone to the point where they recognize the meaning of an introduction—at least as far as the sympathetic relations of that understanding are concerned. Almost any well-bred dog will submit to be presented by his master, or even by persons whom he knows but is not accustomed to obey, to a stranger to whom he has already exhibited some dislike. During the introduction he will submit to those formal exchanges of courtesy which he is accustomed to recognize as the indices of friendship. The impression of this understanding seems to be so permanent that on subsequent meetings the dog, though he may maintain his original dislike of the man who has been forced upon his acquaintance, will continue to treat him with a certain consideration, though it is often easy to see that it is a difficult matter for him to conform to the requirements of society. When we compare the conduct of dogs in these regards with the behavior of other animals, even highly domesticated forms, we perceive how marvellously successful has been man's unconscious effort to mould this creature on his own nature.
Another extremely human characteristic of our canine friends is shown in their susceptibility to ridicule. Faint traces of this quality are to be found in monkeys and perhaps even in the more intelligent horses, but nowhere else save in man, and hardly there, except in the more sensitive natures, do we find contempt, expressed in laughter of the kind which conveys that emotion, so keenly and painfully appreciated. With those dogs which are endowed with a large human quality, such as our various breeds of hounds, it is possible by laughing in their faces not only to quell their rage, but to drive them to a distance. They seem in a way to be put to shame and at the same time hopelessly puzzled as to the nature of their predicament. In this connection we may note the very human feature that after you have cowed a dog by insistent laughter you can never hope to make friends with him. A case of this kind is fresh in my experience. A year or two ago I was imprudent enough to laugh at a very intelligent dog in my neighborhood, he having unreasonably assailed me at my house-door, where he had been left for a long time to wait while his owner was within and had thereby been brought into an unhappy state of mind. Sympathizing with his situation, I preferred to laugh him out of his humor rather than to beat him with my stick. I regret I did not take the other alternative, for I made the poor brute my implacable enemy by my pretence of contempt for him. I am inclined to think that if I had beaten him the matter could have been arranged afterward in a friendly way.
The Pounce of a Terrier
Another very remarkable and I believe hitherto unnoticed likeness between the mind of dogs and that of man is found in the fact that these dumb beasts, unlike all other inferior animals, except, perhaps, some of the more intelligent species of monkeys, will learn lessons from isolated experiences. In this regard they are indeed quite as apt as the lower kinds of men. Thus a dog who has had an unsavory or painful experience with a skunk or a porcupine is apt to keep away from these creatures for a long time thereafter. Where, as is not infrequently the case, a cur takes to eating eggs, a single dose of tartar emetic concealed in an egg which is placed where he can readily find it, is apt to effect an immediate and complete reform. This ready learning from experience is almost the gist of our human quality—at least on the intellectual side of it.
Perhaps the greatest success to which man has attained in his education of the dog is to be found in the measure in which he has overcome the fierce rage which clearly characterized the ancestors of this creature when they first felt the mastering hand. The reader cannot understand the intensity of the rage motive in the carnivora unless he has studied some of these brutes in their wild state, where from the time in the remote ages when they first began to take on the qualities of their species they have survived and won success by the fury of their assault. In almost all our breeds of dogs this primal ferocity has been overlaid by the various motives of rationality, sympathy, and conventional demeanor, until one may live half a lifetime with well-bred dogs without a chance to see the demon which we have buried in their breasts, as we have in our own, beneath a host of civilizing influences. It is rare indeed in our day that a dog, unless insane, will bite a human being. The most of their assaults are pure bluster, mere pretence of fury, as is shown by the fact that if, carried away by their pretence, they are led to use their teeth, it is usually a mere sham assault, having no semblance of the effectiveness of true combat.