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

by W. H. Hudson

Two or three days later it was rumoured that a strange dog had been seen in the neighbourhood of Winterbourne Bishop, in the fields; and women and children going to or coming from outlying cottages and farms had encountered it, sometimes appearing suddenly out of the furze-bushes and staring wildly at them; or they would meet him in some deep lane between hedges, and after standing still a moment eyeing them he would turn and fly in terror from their strange faces. Shepherds began to be alarmed for the safety of their sheep, and there was a good deal of excitement and talk about the strange dog. Two or three days later Caleb encountered it. He was returning from his flock at the side of a large grass field where four or five women were occupied cutting the thistles, and the dog, which he immediately recognized as the one he had seen at the turnpike, was following one of the women about. She was greatly alarmed, and called to him, "Come here, Caleb, for goodness' sake, and drive this big dog away! He do look so desprit, I'm afeared of he."

"Don't you be feared," he shouted back. "He won't hurt 'ee; he's starving—don't you see his bones sticking out? He's asking to be fed." Then going a little nearer he called to her to take hold of the dog by the neck and keep him while he approached. He feared that the dog on seeing him coming would rush away. After a little while she called the dog, but when he went to her she shrank away from him and called out, "No, I daren't touch he—he'll tear my hand off. I never see'd such a desprit-looking beast!"

"'Tis hunger," repeated Caleb, and then very slowly and cautiously he approached, the dog all the time eyeing him suspiciously, ready to rush away on the slightest alarm. And while approaching him he began to speak gently to him, then coming to a stand stooped and patting his legs called the dog to him. Presently he came, sinking his body lower as he advanced and at last crawling, and when he arrived at the shepherd's feet he turned himself over on his back—that eloquent action which a dog uses when humbling himself before and imploring mercy from one mightier than himself, man or dog.

Caleb stooped, and after patting the dog gripped him firmly by the neck and pulled him up, while with his free hand he undid his leather belt to turn it into a dog's collar and leash; then, the end of the strap in his hand, he said "Come," and started home with the dog at his side. Arrived at the cottage he got a bucket and mixed as much meal as would make two good feeds, the dog all the time watching him with his muscles twitching and the water running from his mouth. The meal well mixed he emptied it out on the turf, and what followed, he said, was an amazing thing to see: the dog hurled himself down on the food and started devouring it as if the mass of meal had been some living savage creature he had captured and was frenziedly tearing to pieces. He turned round and round, floundering on the earth, uttering strange noises like half-choking growls and screams while gobbling down the meal; then when he had devoured it all he began tearing up and swallowing the turf for the sake of the little wet meal still adhering to it.

Such rage of hunger Caleb had never seen, and it was painful to him to think of what the dog had endured during those days when it had been roaming foodless about the neighbourhood. Yet it was among sheep all the time—scores of flocks left folded by night at a distance from the village; one would have imagined that the old wolf and wild-dog instinct would have come to life in such circumstances, but the instinct was to all appearance dead.

My belief is that the pure-bred sheep-dog is indeed the last dog to revert to a state of nature; and that when sheep-killing by night is traced to a sheep-dog, the animal has a bad strain in him, of retriever, or cur, or "rabbit-dog," as the shepherds call all terriers. When I was a boy on the pampas sheep-killing dogs were common enough, and they were always curs, or the common dog of the country, a smooth-haired animal about the size of a coach-dog, red, or black, or white. I recall one instance of sheep-killing being traced to our own dogs—we had about six or eight just then. A native neighbour, a few miles away, caught them at it one morning; they escaped him in spite of his good horse, with lasso and bolas also, but his sharp eyes saw them pretty well in the dim light, and by and by he identified them, and my father had to pay him for about thirty slain and badly injured sheep; after which a gallows was erected and our guardians ignominiously hanged. Here we shoot dogs; in some countries the old custom of hanging them, which is perhaps less painful, is still followed.

To go back to our story. From that time the stray dog was Caleb's obedient and affectionate slave, always watching his face and every gesture, and starting up at his slightest word in readiness to do his bidding. When put with the flock he turned out to be a useful sheep-dog, but unfortunately he had not been trained on the Wiltshire Downs. It was plain to see that the work was strange to him, that he had been taught in a different school, and could never forget the old and acquire a new method. But as to what conditions he had been reared in or in what district or country no one could guess. Every one said that he was a sheep-dog, but unlike any sheep-dog they had ever seen; he was not Wiltshire, nor Welsh, nor Sussex, nor Scotch, and they could say no more. Whenever a shepherd saw him for the first time his attention was immediately attracted, and he would stop to speak with Caleb. "What sort of a dog do you call that?" he would say. "I never see'd one just like 'n before."

At length one day when passing by a new building which some workmen had been brought from a distance to erect in the village, one of the men hailed Caleb and said, "Where did you get that dog, mate?"

"Why do you ask me that?" said the shepherd.

"Because I know where he come from: he's a Rooshian, that's what he is. I've see'd many just like him in the Crimea when I was there. But I never see'd one before in England."