Wilkins we see how the love even of a cat may come to be regarded as a human right or need. The old woman who had lost her cat (he afterwards emerged half starved from the cellar), rebelled against the will of God. She allowed that the happiness of husband and children was possibly not to be expected by everyone, but “there was cats enough to go all round.”
I think it impossible to account for the especial affection that we bear to certain dogs. Dogs are, as I have said, in a degree like our children; they come to us and they have to be tended, fed, and guarded, and in these services we learn to love them. And when our affection is reflected back to us from the thing we love, it gains an especially touching quality. In the case of dogs our affection is certainly not a response to any inherent charm obvious to all the world—and here again they resemble children. The dog I loved best was an inferior Irish terrier, who gave me much trouble and anxiety. He was constantly fighting; he barked fiercely at innocent visitors. He killed chickens, and for this I had to beat him cruelly, tie him up and leave him trembling with a dead victim round his neck, a punishment for which I still feel remorse, though it saved him from being shot as a criminal, and cured him of his murderous tendency for many years. Pat was not a clever dog, and when striving to learn certain simple tricks he used to fall into abysses of miserable stupidity, and give up all hope of winning the biscuit earned by his fellow-dog, a Scotch terrier, with all the intelligent certainty of his nation. Pat
had one attractive physical quality; he was perfectly sweet and clean; indeed his adoring family compared his scent to that of new mown hay; he had also a smooth head, which was compared, by one enthusiastic admirer, to a putting-green. He had the attractive and not very common quality of grinning—tucking up his lips and showing the teeth, but producing the effect of a smile, and expressing a shy and apologetic frame of mind.
Pat lived with a bad tempered Scotch terrier called Whisk, whom I liked for his strong character and intellectual acquirements, but I had no great affection for him. He could not bear being spoken to or even looked at while he ate his dinner, and would growl with his mouth full, in a terrific manner, if so disturbed. In the same ferocious spirit he would growl and snap if his basket was accidentally kicked when he was dozing in the evening, and however much we apologised he would take each expression of regret as a fresh insult, and answer them all with growls, which gradually died away in sleep.
We only once had a big dog, and he was not a success though he was an agreeable person. We bought him and his brother, two very fat mastiff puppies, at North Berwick, and brought them south. The one pleasant incident in the journey was the question of a German in Edinburgh station: “Madam, who are these dogs?” We gave away one and kept the other, who bore the magnificent name of Tantallon, soon abbreviated into Tan. He had many friendly habits, but they were on too large a scale for domestic life. He had, for instance,
a way of placing a dirty paw on the table cloth at meals, and he knocked down street children by trying to lick their faces and (so rumour said) by wagging his tail. He frightened cab horses into hysterics, and their drivers fell off and claimed damages. He ate with enjoyment the embroidered perambulator-cushion of a neighbour, who was discovered looking on while Tan tore strips off the cushion with that powerful upward movement of the head and neck which few cushions can withstand. Finally poor Tan had to be given away, and was lost sight of.
These rough outlines of the characters of some of our dogs are meant to show that the reasons for loving dogs are not patent, and that we cannot complain if the words, used by a little girl in Punch towards a couple of earwigs, should be applied to us and our dogs, “Nasty creatures! I cannot think how they can care for each other.”
Stevenson’s essay [223] on The Character of Dogs is not entirely satisfactory. It is surely a one-sided view of the dog that “he is vainer than man, singularly greedy of notice, singularly intolerant of ridicule, suspicious like the deaf, jealous to the degree of frenzy, and radically devoid of truth.” It is hardly possible that he should be vainer than man; and in the dog, vanity is a far simpler and more lovable thing than the complex and offensive passion in his master. His greed for notice and his jealousy are part of his great love for his master. I do not remember that Stevenson ever speaks of
the passionate love (not for mankind, but for one special person) which burns in the heart of a dog. It is a singular omission—and I cannot but think it intentional. If so he was wise, for it certainly does not lend itself to the manner which Stevenson adopts towards dogs. No doubt I may be led into sentimentality and general wearifulness in attempting to describe what seems to me the most striking characteristic of dogs—their great and enduring power of loving. It may be that “the day of an intelligent small dog is passed in the manufacture and laborious communication of falsehood.” But he does not lie when he says quite plainly how greatly he loves his master. Nor do I agree that a small spoiled dog would prate interminably, and still about himself. I think he would say, “I love you” rather often, but that bears repetition. I know a Schipperke whose main interest in life is his dinner, but when his mistress was ill he had only two desires, to lie on her bed and to bite the doctor for approaching her. He had to be dragged out for a walk instead of eagerly begging for one. Was this an elaborate falsehood? Was it pretence? Was it conventionality?
A dog can hardly be expected to plead guilty when detected in crime. He jumps off the forbidden bed when he hears someone coming, and, being unaware that the warm place on the counterpane will betray him, he assumes a calm and happy air. But this is a lie so natural that I for one cannot blame the liar.