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.