Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/592

This is not my story. It was related to me by Hattersley, who is a dog-owner and a dog-elevator. That is to say, he elevates dogs to a superhuman position, which, in my opinion, they are not qualified to occupy. I'm all for dogs, so long as they are kept in their proper places, in a kennel or a stable or something of that kind; but Hattersley has them everywhere―on beds and chairs and sofas. He spends part of his time in teaching them elementary tricks with biscuits or lumps of sugar, and takes up the rest by giving long accounts of their extraordinary sagacity in detecting character. Dogs and children, he says, are like that. They always know in one sniff who likes them and take their measures accordingly. However, I didn't mean to set out all Hattersley's theories on dogs, but to let him tell one of his dog stories. When you've heard it you'll know what kind of man he is. So here goes, in Hattersley's words as nearly as I can remember them:―

"There's only one weak point," said Hattersley, "about dogs, and that is their insistence on being taken for walks. You can't fob them off with a stroll in the garden. If you try, they lie down and refuse to follow you and display no interest whatever in your proceedings. They will go outside the grounds. I can't take my pack of three Pekinese and one Great Dane out on our country roads on account of the Dane's capacity for sudden pouncing on other dogs. He means no harm, poor beast, but he disconcerts and angers other dog-owners, especially ladies, and if the other dogs resent his pounces he naturally fights. It is a point of honour with him. Besides, the Pekinese either stroll defiantly along the crown of the road, thus interrupting all traffic and giving occasion for violent language from motor-cars, or they push their investigation into the nature of grass-tufts to such a point of prolonged particularity that they get left far behind and have to be retrieved and carried after shouts and whistles have been spent on them in vain. These things being so, I have, in the matter of dog-walks, concentrated on a path along the bank of a river, where there is no traffic of wheels, and where on most days other pedestrians and other dogs are so few as to be scarcely noticeable. Here I exercised my dogs until I came to have a sense of private ownership over this particular walk.

"So things went on quite comfortably for some time. But one morning I chanced to walk along my sacred path meditating I know not what trifles and entirely absorbed in them. The Pekinese were following their own devices. The Dane was pacing by my side, and my hand was fortunately on his collar, when I felt a sudden tension and looked up. A hundred yards away, but coming towards me, my startled eyes beheld a tall military-looking lady conducting, at the end of a strong lead, a massive and monstrous bulldog. At the same moment she saw me and we both stopped. I failed to restrain the Pekinese; they made a combined rush and were all round the advancing bulldog in a moment. He did not seem to be aware of their existence, but with eyes glaring fearfully and with foaming mouth he was straining at his lead in a violent endeavour to get at Hamlet, who, on his side, seemed to be consumed with an equal fury. I must mention that Hamlet has a special distaste for bulldogs. In early life, before he came to me, he had lived on intimate terms with a dog of that breed. He consoled himself for that temporary friendship by trying to massacre every bulldog he met. The situation was serious, for we were on a narrow path which at this point was bounded on one side by the river, on the other by a row of willows and a wide ditch.

"'This,' shouted the lady, 'is terrible.'

"'It is,' I said, 'highly inconvenient.'

"'My dog,' she said, 'is most good-natured with little dogs, but he always flies at big dogs, and he can't bear Danes.'

"'Hamlet,' I said, is just like that. He detests bulldogs.'

"'If you wouldn't mind going into the ditch,' she said, 'we might get past.'

"I feel that the situation is worthy of one of Mr. Belloc's battle-plans; but I have no skill in these, and must ask you to imagine the features of the ground and the movements of two commanders whose ardent desire was not to collide but to avoid one another. Both of us were all but tugged over, but at length we accomplished our manoeuvres and got past, and after reciprocal apologies we were able to resume our walks, the Pekinese being with immense difficulty persuaded to abandon their new playfellow.

"We met again on the following two mornings, but in a more open patch of country, where the lady was able to fetch a wide circuit in a meadow. She cowered down in the grass three hundred yards away until the danger was over; but the Pekinese of course tracked her down and seemed determined to plunge down the throat of her animated canine gargoyle. Obviously this sort of thing couldn't go on. On the fourth morning we met again on the confined path. This time Hamlet gave a wrench, the bulldog made à bound, and in a lightning-flash the two were rushing at one another's throats. The lady averted her eyes, I held my breath, and in anticipation I beheld us collecting the tattered remnants of what had once been dogs. Crash! They met; but, instead of setting to work to devour one another, they began to gambol round, to yap with pleasure, to pursue one another in short circles and altogether to give the liveliest signs of joy. The relief was extraordinary. The apprehensive lady raised her head. 'They must have known one another,' she said; and indeed it was so. We discovered that these were the very two dogs who had spent their childhood together. They had known it all the time, and had strained and panted for reunion while we strove to keep them apart. I assure you dogs are better and more intelligent than men. After that we could meet without fear."

That is Hattersley's story. For my own part I don't quite see why he makes such a point of it. What strikes me is this, that Hattersley, who has known dogs all his life, thought they were purple with passion, when as a matter of fact they were wild with joy.

The Italian Blue Cross Fund of the Rome Society for the Protection of Animals is in great need of funds for the establishment of hospitals for horses wounded in the War, for the provision of veterinary surgeons and the supply of ambulances and drugs. This is the first appeal that Mr. Punch has made for our new Allies, and he hopes that some of his readers will kindly send gifts in aid to Mrs. Graham-Harrison, 36, Sloane Gardens, S.W.

"Sociable young fellow required to go half-shares in season's expenses in fully equipped river camp, age about 25 to 30, good thing for someone suitable."―Advt. in "Daily Mail."

There are several other camps ready to welcome sociable young fellows of this age; "good thing for someone suitable."

Extract from Battalion Orders, Tipperary, June 17th:—

"To-morrow being the Centenary of the Battle of Waterloo, in which the R. Innis. Furs. was the only Regiment that took part, the afternoon will be observed as a half-holiday by the Brigade."