A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs

by W. H. Hudson

"Master," said the other, "I got he when he were a pup and broke 'n to help me with the sheep and not to catch rabbits; and now I've killed 'n and he'll catch no rabbits."

The farmer knew his man, and swallowing his anger walked off without another word.

Later on in the day he was severely blamed by a shepherd friend who said that he could easily have sold the dog to one of the drovers, who were always anxious to pick up a dog in their village, and he would have had the money to repay him for his trouble; to which Bawcombe returned, "If he wouldn't work for I that broke 'n he wouldn't work for another. But I'll never again break a dog that isn't pure-bred."

But though he justified himself he had suffered remorse for what he had done; not only at the time, when he covered the dead dog up with bracken and refused to work any more that day, but the feeling had persisted all his life, and he could not relate the incident without showing it very plainly. He bitterly blamed himself for having taken the pup and for spending long months in training him without having first taken pains to inform himself that there was no bad blood in him. And although the dog was perhaps unfit to live he had finally killed him in anger. If it had not been for that sudden impetuous chase after a swallow he would have borne with him and considered afterwards what was to be done; but that dash after the bird was more than he could stand; for it looked as if Tory had done it purposely, in something of a mocking spirit, to exhibit his wonderful activity and speed to his master, sweating there at his task, and make him see what he had lost in offending him.

The shepherd gave another instance of a mistake he once made which caused him a good deal of pain. It was the case of a dog named Bob which he owned when a young man. He was an exceptionally small dog, but his quick intelligence made up for lack of strength, and he was of a very lively disposition, so that he was a good companion to a shepherd as well as a good servant.

One summer day at noon Caleb was going to his flock in the fields, walking by a hedge, when he noticed Bob sniffing suspiciously at the roots of an old holly-tree growing on the bank. It was a low but very old tree with a thick trunk, rotten and hollow inside, the cavity being hidden with the brushwood growing up from the roots. As he came abreast of the tree, Bob looked up and emitted a low whine, that sound which says so much when used by a dog to his master and which his master does not always rightly understand. At all events he did not do so in this case. It was August and the shooting had begun, and Caleb jumped to the conclusion that a wounded bird had crept into the hollow tree to hide, and so to Bob's whine, which expressed fear and asked what he was to do, the shepherd answered, "Get him." Bob dashed in, but quickly recoiled, whining in a piteous way, and began rubbing his face on his legs. Bawcombe in alarm jumped down and peered into the hollow trunk and heard a slight rustling of dead leaves, but saw nothing. His dog had been bitten by an adder, and he at once returned to the village, bitterly blaming himself for the mistake he had made and greatly fearing that he would lose his dog. Arrived at the village his mother at once went off to the down to inform Isaac of the trouble and ask him what they were to do. Caleb had to wait some time, as none of the villagers who gathered round could suggest a remedy, and in the meantime Bob continued rubbing his cheek against his foreleg, twitching and whining with pain; and before long the face and head began to swell on one side, the swelling extending to the nape and downwards to the throat. Presently Isaac himself, full of concern, arrived on the scene, having left his wife in charge of the flock, and at the same time a man from a neighbouring village came riding by and joined the group. The horseman got off and assisted Caleb in holding the dog while Isaac made a number of incisions with his knife in the swollen place and let out some blood, after which they rubbed the wounds and all the swollen part with an oil used for the purpose. The composition of this oil was a secret: it was made by a man in one of the downland villages and sold at eighteenpence a small bottle; Isaac was a believer in its efficacy, and always kept a bottle hidden away somewhere in his cottage.

Bob recovered in a few days, but the hair fell out from all the part which had been swollen, and he was a curious-looking dog with half his face and head naked until he got his fresh coat, when it grew again. He was as good and active a dog as ever, and lived to a good old age, but one result of the poison he never got over: his bark had changed from a sharp ringing sound to a low and hoarse one. "He always barked," said the shepherd, "like a dog with a sore throat."

To go back to the subject of training a dog. Once you make a beginning it must be carried through to a finish. You take him at the age of six months, and the education must be fairly complete when he is a year old. He is then lively, impressionable, exceedingly adaptive; his intelligence at that period is most like man's; but it would be a mistake to think that it will continue so—that to what he learns now in this wonderful half-year, other things may be added by and by as opportunity arises. At a year he has practically got to the end of his capacity to learn. He has lost his human-like receptivity, but what he has been taught will remain with him for the rest of his life. We can hardly say that he remembers it; it is more like what is called "inherited memory" or "lapsed intelligence."

All this is very important to a shepherd, and explains the reason an old head-shepherd had for saying to me that he had never had, and never would have, a dog he had not trained himself. No two men follow precisely the same method in training, and a dog transferred from his trainer to another man is always a little at a loss; method, voice, gestures, personality, are all different; his new master must study him and in a way adapt himself to the dog. The dog is still more at a loss when transferred from one kind of country to another where the sheep are worked in a different manner, and one instance Caleb gave me of this is worth relating. It was, I thought, one of his best dog stories.

His dogs as a rule were bought as pups; occasionally he had had to get a dog already trained, a painful necessity to a shepherd, seeing that the pound or two it costs—the price of an ordinary animal—is a big sum of money to him. And once in his life he got an old trained sheep-dog for nothing. He was young then, and acting as under-shepherd in his native village, when the report came one day that a great circus and menagerie which had been exhibiting in the west was on its way to Salisbury, and would be coming past the village about six o'clock on the following morning. The turnpike was a little over a mile away, and thither Caleb went with half a dozen other young men of the village at about five o'clock to see the show pass, and sat on a gate beside a wood to wait its coming. In due time the long procession of horses and mounted men and women, and gorgeous vans containing lions and tigers and other strange beasts, came by, affording them great admiration and delight. When it had gone on and the last van had disappeared at the turning of the road, they got down from the gate and were about to set out on their way back when a big, shaggy sheepdog came out of the wood and running to the road began looking up and down in a bewildered way. They had no doubt that he belonged to the circus and had turned aside to hunt a rabbit in the wood; then, thinking the animal would understand them, they shouted to it and waved their arms in the direction the procession had gone. But the dog became frightened, and turning fled back into cover, and they saw no more of it.