Albert Payson Terhune

“ He did not lie down as usual, but sat—tulip ears erect, dark eyes cloudy with trouble; head turning slowly from side to side, nostrils pulsing.
To a human, there was nothing to see or hear or smell—other than the cool beauty of the nook, the soughing of the breeze in the willows, the soft fragrance of a June morning. To a dog, there were faint rustling sounds that were not made by the breeze. There were equally faint and elusive scents that the human nose could not register. Notably, a subtle odor as of crushed cucumbers. (If ever you have killed a pit-viper, you know that smell.) ”

“ A shaggy owl crouched at a tree-limb hole and blinked sulkily about in search of prey and in hope of dusk. A crow, its black feet red with a slain snowbird's blood, flapped clumsily overhead. A poet would have vowed that the still and white-shrouded wilderness was a shrine sacred to solitude and severe peace. Lad could have told him better. Nature (beneath the surface) is never solitary and never at peace.
When a dog is very old and very heavy and a little unwieldy, it is hard to walk through sixteen-inch snow, even if one moves slowly and sedately. ”

“ Then it was that the Wall Street Farmer had his Inspiration. Which brings us by easy degrees to the Hampton Dog Show.
Even as the Fiery Cross among the Highland crags once flashed signal of War, so, when the World War swirl sucked nation after nation into its eddy, the Red Cross flamed from one end of America to the other, as the common rallying point for those who, for a time, must do their fighting on the hither side of the gray seas. The country bristled with a thousand money-getting functions of a thousand different kinds; with one objective—the Red Cross. ”

“ Here, through the stark and drifted undergrowth, Rex and Wolf had recently swept along in pursuit of a half-grown rabbit. Even a human eye could not have missed their partly-covered tracks; but Lad knew whose track was whose and which dog had been in the lead.
Yes, to humans, the forest would have seemed a deserted white waste. Lad knew it was thick-populated with the Little People of the woodland, and that all day and all night the seemingly empty and placid groves were a blend of battlefield, slaughterhouse and restaurant. ”

“ His keen nostrils, even before his eyes, told him something was amiss with his cherished race-track. The eddying shift of the breeze, from west to north, had brought to his nose the odor which had checked his onrush; an odor that wakened all sorts of vaguely formless memories far back in Lad's brain; and which he did not at all care for.
Scent is ten times stronger, to a dog, than is sight. The best dog is near sighted. And the worst dog has a magic sense of smell. Wherefore, a dog almost always uses his nose first and his eyes last. ”

“ The thermometer was little above zero; but the snow had been a familiar bedfellow, for centuries, to Lad's Scottish forefathers; and the cold was harmless against the woven thickness of his tawny coat. Picking his way in stately fashion along the ill-broken track of the driveway, he strolled toward the woods. To humans there was nothing in the outdoor day but snow and chill and bluster and bitter loneliness. To the trained eye and the miraculous scent-power of a collie it contained a million things of dramatic interest. ”

“ Now Lad was in dire haste to get home, and Lad was in dire misery of mind and body, but his big heart went out in eagerly loving answer to the impulsive caress. He worshipped children, and would cheerfully endure from them any amount of mauling.
At the baby embrace and the baby voice, he stopped short in his progress. His plumy tail wagged in glad friendliness; his muzzled nose sought wistfully to kiss the pink little face on a level with his own. The baby tightened her hug, and laid her rose leaf cheek close to his own. ”

“ On his father's side Rex was pure collie; on his mother's, pure bull-terrier. That is an accidental blending of two breeds which cannot blend. He looked more like a fawn-colored Great Dane than anything else. He was short-haired, full two inches taller and ten pounds heavier than Lad, and had the bunch-muscled jaws of a killer.
There was not an outlander dog for two miles in either direction that Rex had not at one time or another met and vanquished. The bull-terrier strain, which blended so ill with collie blood, made its possessor a terrific fighter. He was swift as a deer, strong as a puma. ”

“ A gust of resentful rage pierced the dullness of Wolf's brain and sent a thrill of fierce energy through him. For the moment this carried him out of his sick self and brought back all his former zest as a watch-dog.
Down the hill, like a furry whirlwind, flew Wolf, every tooth bared, his back a-bristle from neck to tail. Now he was well within sight of the intruder. He saw the man pausing to adjust something to one of his hands. Then, before this could be accomplished, Wolf saw him pause and stare through the darkness as the wild onrush of the dog's feet struck upon his hearing. ”

“ No human had seen or heard him. Even Lad, sprawling half-asleep on the veranda, had not seen him. For, in spite of theory, a dog's eye by daylight is not so keen or so far-seeing as is a human's. But the wind had brought news of a foreign presence on The Place—a presence which Lad's hasty glance at driveway and lake edge did not verify.
So the dog had risen to his feet, stretched himself, collie-fashion, fore and aft, and trotted quickly away to investigate. Scent, and then sound, taught him which way to go. ”

“ Yet, at the back of the human throat ever lurks that fool-cry of "Mad dog!"—ever ready to leap forth into shouted words at the faintest provocation.
One wonders, disgustedly, how many thousand luckless and totally harmless pet dogs in the course of a year are thus hunted down and shot or kicked or stoned to death in the sacred name of Humanity, just because some idiot mistakes a hanging tongue or an uncertainty of direction for signs of that semi-phantom malady known as "rabies." ”

“ Small wonder that many humans lose patience and temper during the process and idiotically resort to the whip, to the boot-toe and to bellowing—in which case the puppy is never decently educated, but emerges from the process with a cowed and broken spirit or with an incurable streak of meanness that renders him worthless.
Time, patience, firmness, wisdom, temper-control, gentleness—these be the six absolute essentials for training a puppy. Happy the human who is blessed with any three of these qualities. Lad, being only a dog, was abundantly possessed of all six. ”

“ Pausing uncertainly, Tenebris opened his eyes and glared about him. A yard or two away a shaggy dog was rising from the tumble caused by the jerky uptossing of the bull's head.
Now, were this a fiction yarn, it would be interesting to devise reasons why Lad should have flown to the rescue of a human whom he loathed, and arrayed himself against a fellow-beast toward which he felt no hatred at all.
To dogs all men are gods. And perhaps Lad felt the urge of saving even a detested god from the onslaught of a beast. Or perhaps not. One can go only by the facts. ”

“ Heredity and training and lifelong fidelity took control of the lethargic dog, dragging him to his feet and down the veranda steps through no volition of his own.
Every motion tired him. He was dizzy and nauseated. He craved sleep; but as he was just a thoroughbred dog and not a wise human, he did not stop to think up good reasons why he should shirk his duty because he did not feel like performing it. ”

“ To do justice to the Master and the Mistress, they had no idea—then—of this torture. Otherwise all the blue ribbons ever woven would not have tempted them to subject their beloved chum to it.
In some kennels Airedales were "plucked," by hand, to rid them of the last vestige of the soft gray outer coat which is an Airedale's chief natural beauty—and no hair of which must be seen in a show. "Plucking" a dog is like pulling live hairs from a human head, so far as the sensation goes. But show-traditions demand the anguish. ”

“ He was dismayed to find that the ice collapsed under the pounding feet. There was a dull, sloppy sound. A ten-foot ice-cake broke off from the main sheet; breaking at once into a dozen smaller cakes; and Wolf disappeared, tail first, into the swift-running water beneath.
To the surface he came, at the outer edge of the hole. He was mad, clear through, at the prank his beloved lake had played on him. He struck out for shore. On the landward side of the opening his forefeet clawed helplessly at the unbroken ledge of ice. ”

“ Lad was joyously pursuing, through the forest aisles of dreamland, a whole army of squirrels that had not sense enough to climb trees—when in a moment, he was wide awake and on guard. Far off, very far off, he heard a man walking.
Now, to a trained dog there is as much difference in the sound of human footfalls as, to humans, there is a difference in the aspect of human faces. A belated countryman walking along the highway, a furlong distant, would not have awakened Lad from sleep. ”

“ To begin with, Wolf had a joyous yearning to tear up or bury every portable thing that could be buried or torn. He had a craze for destruction. A dropped lace handkerchief, a cushion left on the grass, a book or a hat lying on a veranda-chair—these and a thousand other things he looked on as treasure-trove, to be destroyed as quickly and as delightedly as possible.
He also enjoyed taking a flying leap onto the face or body of any hammock-sleeper. He would howl long and lamentably, nearly every night, at the moon. If the night were moonless, he howled on general principles. ”

“ Burnished shaggy coat a-bristle, tail delightedly wagging, the dog bounded [Pg 246] forward. He set up an ear-splitting fanfare of barking.
Round and round the bull he whirled, never letting up on that deafening volley of barks; nipping now at ears, now at nose, now at heels; dodging in and out under the giant's clumsy body; easily avoiding the bewilderingly awkward kicks and lunges of his enemy. Then, forefeet crouching and muzzle close to the ground, like a playful puppy, he waved his plumed tail violently and, in a new succession of barks, wooed his adversary to the attack. ”

“ A dog, for looks, that was the despair of all competing dogdom.
Proudly perfect in carriage, in mist-gray coat, in a hundred points—from the noble pale-eyed head to the long massy brush—Lochinvar III made people catch their breath and stare. Even the Mistress' heart went out—though with a tinge of shame for disloyalty to Lad—at his beauty.
Arrived at the central post, the Wall Street Farmer unsnapped the leash. Then, one hand on the Merle's head and the other holding a half-smoked cigar between two pudgy fingers, he smiled upon the tense onlookers. ”

“ Without so much as a growl of warning, eighty pounds of muscular, hairy energy smote the negro full in the chest. A set of hot-breathing jaws flashed for his jugular vein, missed it by a half-inch, and the graze left a red-hot searing pain along the negro's throat. In the merest fraction of a moment, the murderously snapping jaws sank into the thief's shoulder. It is collie custom to fight with a running accompaniment of snarling growls. But Lad did not give voice. ”

“ The connecting points between the inner and outer Lad were a pair of the wisest and darkest and most sorrowful eyes in all dogdom—eyes that gave the lie to folk who say no dog has a soul. There are such dogs once in a human generation. ”

“ Of all the dogs on The Place, big Lad alone had free run of the house, by day and by night.
He slept in a "cave" under the piano. He even had access to the sacred dining-room, at mealtimes—where always he lay to the left of the Master's chair.
With the Master, he would willingly unbend for a romp at any or all times. At the Mistress' behest he would play with all the silly abandon of a puppy; rolling on the ground at her feet, making as though to seize and crush one of her little shoes in his mighty jaws ”

“ There was the ice-cool lake to plunge into for a swim or a wallow, after a run in the dust and July heat. There was a deliciously comfortable old rug in front of the living-room's open fire whereon to lie, shoulder to shoulder, on the nights when the wind screamed through bare trees and the snow scratched hungrily at the panes.
Best of all, to them both, there were the Master and the Mistress; especially the Mistress.
Any man with money to make the purchase may become a dog's owner. ”

“ It looked like something between an Old English sheep-dog and a dachshund; straw-colored fur enveloped the scrawny body; a miserable apology for a bushy tail hung limply between crooked hind legs; evil little eyes peered forth from beneath a scarecrow stubble of head fringe; it was not a pretty dog, this canine the Wall Street Farmer had just addressed by the poetic title of "Melisande."
"What in blazes is he?" asked the Master.
"She is a Prussian sheep-dog," proudly replied the Wall Street Farmer. "She is the first of her breed ever imported to America. ”

“ A grumbling veterinary was summoned on the telephone and was lured by pledge of a triple fee to chug through ten miles of storm in a balky car to the rescue.
Lad was lying with his head in the Mistress' lap. The vet' looked the unconscious dog over and then said tersely:
"I wish I'd stayed at home. He's as good as dead."
"He's a million times better than dead," denied the Master. "I know Lad. You don't. He's got into the habit of living, and he's not going to break that habit, not if the best nursing and surgery in the State can keep him from doing it. Get busy!" ”

“ Ever since the car had entered Manhattan Island, unhappy Lad's nostrils had been aquiver with a million new and troublous odors. Now, as the car halted, these myriad strange smells were lost in one—an all-pervasive scent of dog. To a human, out there in the street, the scent was not observable. To a dog it was overwhelming. ”

“ By a sharp growl or a menacing curl of the lips, Lad silenced the youngster's clamorous salvo when a guest or tradesman entered The Place, whether on foot or in a car. By his own thunderously menacing bark he incited Wolf to a like outburst when some peddler or tramp sought to slouch down the drive toward the house.
The full tale of Wolf's education would require many profitless pages in the telling. At times the Mistress and the Master, watching from the sidelines, would wonder at Lad's persistency and would despair of his success. ”

“ As Mortimer came into the room the infatuated Lad at his heels, the fluffy ball lazily uncurled and stretched—thereby revealing itself as no ball, but a superfurry gray kitten—the Mistress' temperamental new Persian kitten rejoicing in the dreamily Oriental name of Tipperary.
With a squeal of glad discovery, Mortimer grabbed Tipperary with both hands, essaying to pull her fox-brush tail. Now, no sane person needs to be told the basic difference between the heart of a cat and the heart of a dog. ”

“ Yes, sir, Laddie always comes out from under his piano the minute he hears my step in the hall outside. And he always comes right up to me and wags that big plume of a tail of his, and falls into step alongside of me and walks over to the front door, right beside me all the way. He knows as much as many a human, that dog does, sir. ”