A Dog And A Whip


[May 18, 1889.]



You have lately published several dog stories. Allow me to send you

another for publication should you think it worthy. It was told me

to-day by a lady whom I cross-examined to get full details:--"Some

twenty years back we had a poodle--white, with one black ear. After the

manner of his race, he was never quite happy unless he carried something

in his mouth. He was intelligent and teachabl
to the last degree. The

great defect in his character was the impossibility of distinguishing

meum from tuum. Anything he could get hold of he seemed to think,

according to his dogged ethics, to be fairly his own. On one occasion he

entered the room of one of the maidservants and stole her loaf of bread,

carefully shutting the door after him with his feet--the latter part

being a feat I had taught him. The woman--Irish--was scared, and thought

that the dog was the devil incarnate. The necessity of discipline on

the one hand, and of occupation on the other, induced me one day to

enter a saddler's shop, situated in a straight street about half a mile

from our house, and buy a whip. Shortly after my return home he

committed some act of petty larceny, so I gave him a beating with the

whip he had carried home. Going for a walk next day the dog, as usual,

accompanied me, and was entrusted with the whip to carry. Directly we

got outside the door he started off at his best pace straight down the

street, paying no attention whatever, to my repeated calls. He entered

the saddler's shop and deposited the whip on the floor. When I arrived

the saddler showed me the whip lying exactly where the dog had deposited

it."



HENRY H. MAXWELL.



More

;