I once knew a very eccentric dog. He was a real old English spaniel, one of that kind you so rarely see, with long body, short legs, with great bone, grand head, jaws and teeth like a wolf's almost, and long ears that would meet round his nose. Poor fellow, his temper was certainly unamiable, but I think this was caused by the state of his health. When he was a puppy he was troubled with insects, and a stupid groom, to show, I suppose, that he had some brains, declared he could cure him with some nostrum of his own; the effect of it being that the poor puppy's hair nearly all came off. His skin was burned in several places, and he was made so ill that for several weeks a veterinary surgeon did not think he could recover. He did though, at length, but his constitution had received such a shock that he was always subject to skin disease, and yet he could not stand the least medicine. He was a very curious animal, never showing much attachment to anyone; he would bite his best friends on the least provocation. Nothing, though, offended him so much as being laughed at,—that was an insult he never forgave. If you began to laugh at him, he would growl in a very ominous manner, and, if you persisted in it, would snap at you and give you such a bite, that you would not care to try again. If you wished to please him, you had to get a lot of old birds' nests, and give them to him one by one; he would carry them about for some time, and then he would sit down and tear them to pieces. He was not particularly fond of going for a walk with anyone; but if you got some nests and gave him one occasionally, he would trot along with you as happily as possible. Another curious habit of his was, that he would never get out of the way for anyone. When he was trotting along he never moved from his line if he saw anyone coming; but if he saw they did not intend to move, would begin to growl and look so savage that people usually made haste out of his way. When he happened to be running down a hill, he did not growl, but merely ran against people if they did not clear out—his great weight usually upsetting them, of which he took not the slightest notice. A great friendship arose between this dog and a fine cat we had, and it was very amusing to see them together. He would walk up to the cat and begin to lick her all over, and then she would rub all round him, purring, and seeming to be very fond of him—when all of a sudden she would stop, look up in his face and spit at him, at the same time giving him two or three sharp scratches, the only notice of which that he took was to close his eyes, so that they might not be hurt. Poor dog, as I said before, he suffered from skin disease, and the medicine that you could give another dog with impunity would nearly kill him, and it was the same with any outward application. At length when, on one occasion, he was suffering very much, I took him to the huntsman of a pack of foxhounds, and asked if he could recommend anything, and he told me of some stuff he dressed the puppies with, that never hurt them, and gave me some. I had it applied to some other dogs, and it did not do them the least harm, so I ordered this dog to be dressed with it. It did not seem to affect him at first, but on the next morning he was found dead in his kennel. In spite of his unamiable character, which I put down to his bad health, I was very sorry to lose him, for he had more regard for me, I think, than almost anyone, and was a first-class dog for cover shooting, with me at least, for he would not pay any attention out shooting to anyone else.
I have met with two cases of decided idiocy in dogs—one occurred fully thirty years ago. It was just about the time that Pomeranian dogs were first brought into England. An old lady saw several of them abroad, and, admiring them very much, brought several home and gave them away as presents to her friends. She gave one to an uncle of mine; it was a white one, with a splendid coat, and altogether looked a model of the breed, and everyone who saw it remarked on its beauty; it had, however, very curious-looking blue eyes, and its habits were very strange. It would lie curled up on the hearth-rug in the dining-room the whole day, taking no notice of anyone or anything, except twice a day, when regularly, about half-past eleven in the morning and at four in the afternoon, it would get up, and, if the French windows were open, would go out on to the lawn. If they were closed, it waited till the door was opened, and then going out, went each day to the same exact spot, and commenced running round and round in a circle from right to left. Having done this for some minutes, he would stop, rear up on his hind legs, and giving his head a most peculiar twist, much like the way parrots and owls twist their necks, he would then drop down again, and run the circle from left to right. Having done this, he came indoors, and lay down on the rug. He never showed the least affection for anyone, or appeared to know them. If you called out to him, he would sometimes look up in a vague sort of way, as if he wondered what the noise was; and the foot-man had to lead him out to meals each day, as the dog never made the least attempt to stir in search of food. The man used to say he had more trouble to make this dog feed than to keep any others from devouring whatever they could get at. Altogether, the dog did not seem to have the least sense in the world, and was, I think, an undoubted idiot.
The second case of the sort I met with was in a large sort of retriever that a friend of mine had. He asked me to come and see a dog that had been given him, as it was a "very odd sort of beast," and so it was. It had the most curious coat I ever saw on a dog—very long and iron-grey, with black markings, a huge bushy tail, so big and so long that it gave one the idea that the dog's hind legs were in the wrong place, and, instead of being at the extremity of its body, were put on somewhere about the middle of its stomach. To add to everything, the dog squinted, a thing I never heard of or saw in any other dog before or since. It was not that one of the eyes was blind and did not move properly, but the eyes actually crossed one another; his head, too, was the shape of a solid parallelogram, and very narrow between the ears. The dog was fastened to a kennel, and was walking backwards and forwards in front of it, very much in the way a caged hyena does. On being loosed, it bundled off in a clumsy gallop, and soon ran right into a barrow that had been left on one of the paths. On being brought up by this obstacle, instead of jumping over it, as any other dog would have done, he moved round it, and when he found his head clear, galloped off again on the same straight line, which this time landed him in a laurel bush, through which he scrambled, and again went on in the same direction, and this I heard was his regular habit. He had another very awkward trick, and that was, if he was walking behind you, he would come up and lay hold of your leg, not apparently with any vicious design, for if you stopped and looked down at him, there he was with his eyes half shut, holding on to your leg with his teeth, as if it was necessary to support himself by such means. After a time he would drop his jaws off your leg and go maundering along as he had done before; but it was not altogether a pleasant trick. My last interview with the brute was not an agreeable one. We were to go out duck shooting on the river, and my friend proposed taking the dog with us in the punt to retrieve the ducks. This I decidedly objected to, as a wet dog in a boat is an unpleasant companion, so he was left on the bank to follow as best he might. The dog trotted along quietly for some way, until at length we fired at some ducks, when he jumped into the river to get them, as we thought; instead of which he swam up to the punt and seizing the pole in his mouth began to bite and tear at it in the most furious way. He then tried to scramble into the boat, and getting his fore-paws on the gunwale, began to tear at the sides in the most determined manner, snapping furiously at anyone who went near him. The only thing we could do was to try and duck him by means of the punt pole, but directly he came up again he attacked the boat afresh, so that my friend thought the best thing to do was to shoot him, which accordingly was done. I shall never forget the expression of ferocity in the dog's face or the mad way in which he tore at the sides of the boat and the punt pole.
The dog I am now about to mention was, I consider, an instance of the action of over-instruction working on naturally weak powers. When out shooting at the Cape, in the Swehamsdam district, something in the bush attracted my notice, and on riding up I found it was a pointer in the last stage of starvation. Pitying the poor deserted animal, I told one of my attendants to take it up and bring it to the waggon, which he did, and after forcing some broth down its throat, the dog seemed to revive, and with care it ultimately recovered, and turned out a very handsome animal. When it had got up its strength again, I took it out to try it. The dog ranged fairly and soon got on the scent of game, as I imagined. Seeing him drawing on very fast, I though he had got a Korhoram in front of him, and as these birds run tremendously, I made a circle to head the supposed game; but on looking back at the dog, saw he was standing dead at a small bush. I went back to him and tried all round it in every direction, but in vain. I then looked on the ground to see if there was one of the small land tortoises, which abound there, and which dogs will always point, but found there was not; so dismounting, I went up to the bush and then found he was standing at a small striped mouse, so I scolded him and made him come off. His next exploit was to make a splendid point at a pair of cast-off Hottentot "crackers" which were lying in the bush, bringing up in his gallop in really magnificent style. On rating him for this, he fixed all his attention on me, and though he ranged well, kept his eye whenever possible on me, and if I stopped pointed at once, or even if I held out my arm. His last grand feat was a dead point at something that I thought was a piece of dead stick lying on the ground, and I was just on the point of taking it up to give him a cut with it for being such a fool when I discovered that it was a puff adder; so calling the dog off, I blew it to pieces with a shot, but my escape was a narrow one. After this, I gave the dog away to a lady who took a fancy to him, as he was so handsome, and it was most ludicrous to see him in her drawing-room pointing steadily at footstools or work-boxes, or anything that was shewn him. The dog had evidently been well broken, but its brain could not take the impression that he was only to point at game. He had a confused idea that he ought to point at anything with a scent to it, or anything he imagined his master wished him to.
NOVEMBER SHOOTING
Nearly three months have already passed away since the shooting season began. I won't say the three best months, because snipe and woodcock are coming in, and the cream of the pheasant shooting is yet to come.
For myself, much as I like knocking over grouse and partridges, give me snipe shooting before all. It is the fox-hunting of shooting.
I know of nothing more exciting than getting on to a good snipe bog, when they lay well and there are plenty of them. When they rise in whisps, that is, several at a time, you may make up your mind they are wild and difficult to approach. In snipe shooting always have the wind on your back.
The snipe ever flies against the wind; therefore you have a much better shot than you would have if he were to dart away down wind.