THE LITTLE RED DOG

Sauntering along a lane-like road between Charterhouse Hinton and Woolverton, in the West Country, I spied a small red dog trotting along some distance behind me. He was in the middle of the road, but seeing that he was observed he sheered off to the other side, and when nearly abreast of me paused suspiciously, sniffed the air to get the exact smell, then made a dash past, and after going about twenty or thirty yards full speed, dropped once more into his travelling trot, to vanish from sight at the next bend in the road.

Though alone, I laughed, for he was a very old acquaintance of mine. I knew him well, although he did not know me, and regarding me as a stranger he very naturally associated my appearance with that well-aimed stone or half-brick which had doubtless registered an impression on his small brain. I knew him because he is a common type, widely distributed on the earth; I doubt if there are many countries where you will not meet him--a degenerate or dwarf variety of the universal cur, smaller than a fox-terrier and shorter-legged; the low stature, long body, small ears, and blunt nose giving him a somewhat stoaty or even reptilian appearance among the canines. His red colour is, indeed, the commonest hue of the common dog, or cur, wherever found. It is rarely a bright red, like that of the Irish setter, or any pleasing shade of red, as in the dingo, the fox, and the South American maned wolf; it is dull, often inclining to yellow, sometimes mixed with grey as in the jackal, sometimes with a dash of ginger in it. The unbeautiful yellowish-red is the prevailing hue of the pariah dog. At all events that is the impression one gets from the few of the numberless travellers in the East who have condescended to tell us anything about this low-down animal.

Where the cur or pariah flourishes, there you are sure to find the small red dog, and perhaps wonder at his ability to maintain his existence. He is certainly placed at a great disadvantage. If he finds or steals a bone, the first big dog he meets will say to him, “Drop it!” And he will drop it at once, knowing very well that if he refuses to do so it will be taken from him, and his own poor little bones perhaps get crunched in the process. As compensation he has, I fancy, a somewhat quicker intelligence, a subtler cunning. His brains weigh less by a great deal than those of the bull-dog or a big cur, but--like ladies’ brains compared with men’s--they are of a finer quality.

When I encountered this animal in the quiet Somerset road, and laughed to see him and exclaimed mentally, “There he goes, the same old little red dog, suspicious and sneaky as ever, and very brisk and busy although his years must be well-nigh as many as my own,” I was thinking of the far past, and the sight of him brought back a memory of one of the first of the small red dogs I have known intimately. I was a boy then, and my home was in the pampas of Buenos Ayres. I had a young sister, a bright, lively girl, and I remember that a poor native woman who lived in a smoky hovel a few miles away was fond of her, and that she came one day with a present for her--something precious wrapped up in a shawl--a little red pup, one of a litter which her own beloved dog had brought forth. My sister accepted the present joyfully, for though we possessed fourteen or fifteen dogs at the time, these all belonged to the house; they were everybody’s and nobody’s in particular, and she was delighted to have one that would be her very own. It grew into a common red dog, rather better-looking than most of its kind, having a bushier tail, longer and brighter-coloured hair, and a somewhat foxy head and face. In spite of these good points, we boys never tired of laughing at her little Reddie, as he was called, and his intense devotion to his young mistress and faith in her power to protect him only made him seem more ludicrous. When we all walked together on the grass plain, my brother and I used to think it great fun to separate Reddie from his mistress by making a sudden dash, and then hunt him over the turf. Away he would go, performing a wide circuit, then, doubling back, would fly to her for safety. She, stooping and holding out her hands to him, would wait his coming, and at the end, with one flying leap, he would land himself in her arms, almost capsizing her with the force of the impact, and from that refuge look back reproachfully at us.

The cunning little ways of the small red dog were learned later when I came to know him in the city of Buenos Ayres. Loitering at the waterside one day, I became aware of an animal of this kind following me, and no sooner did he catch my eye than he came up, wagging, wriggling, and grinning, smiling, so to speak, all over his body; and I, thinking he had lost home and friends and touched by his appeal, allowed him to follow me through the streets to the house of relations where I was staying. I told them I intended keeping the outcast awhile to see what could be done with him. My friends did not welcome him warmly, and they even made some disparaging remarks about little red dogs in general; but they gave him his dinner--a big plateful of meat--which he devoured greedily, and then, very much at home, he stretched himself out on the hearth-rug and went fast asleep. When he woke an hour later he jumped up and ran to the hall, and, finding the street-door closed, made a great row, howling and scratching at the panels. I hurried out and opened the door, and out and off he went, without so much as a thank-you. He had found a fool and had succeeded in getting something out of him, and his business with me was ended. There was no hesitation; he was going straight home, and knew his way quite well.

Years afterwards it was a surprise to me to find that the little red dog was an inhabitant of London. There was no muzzling order then, in the ’seventies, and quite a common sight was the independent dog, usually a cur, roaming the streets in search of stray scraps of food. He shared the sparrows’ broken bread; he turned over the rubbish heaps left by the road-sweepers; he sniffed about areas, on the look-out for an open dust-bin; and he hung persistently about the butcher’s shop, where a jealous eye was kept on his movements. These dogs doubtless had owners, who paid the yearly tax; but it is probable that in most cases they found for themselves. Probably, too, the adventurous life of the streets, where carrion was not too plentiful, had the effect of sharpening their wits. Here, at all events, I was witness of an action on the part of a small red dog which fairly astonished me; that confidence trick the little Argentine beast had practised on me was nothing to it.

In Regent Street, of all places, one bright winter morning, I caught sight of a dog lying on the pavement close to the wall, hungrily gnawing at a big beef bone which he had stolen or picked out of a neighbouring dust-hole. He was a miserable-looking object, a sort of lurcher, of a dirty red colour, with ribs showing like the bars of a gridiron through his mangy side. Even in those pre-muzzling days, when we still had the pariah, it was a little strange to see him gnawing his bone at that spot, just by Peter Robinson’s, where the broad pavement was full of shopping ladies; and I stood still to watch him. Presently a small red dog came trotting along the pavement from the direction of the Circus, and catching sight of the mangy lurcher with the bone he was instantly struck motionless, and crouching low as if to make a dash at the other, his tail stiff, his hair bristling, he continued gazing for some moments; and then, just when I thought the rush and struggle was about to take place, up jumped this little red cur and rushed back towards the Circus, uttering a succession of excited shrieky barks. The contagion was irresistible. Off went the lurcher, furiously barking too, and quickly overtaking the small dog dashed on and away to the middle of the Circus to see what all the noise was about. It was something tremendously important to dogs in general, no doubt. But the little red dog, the little liar, had no sooner been overtaken and passed by the other, than back he ran, and picking up the bone, made off with it in the opposite direction. Very soon the lurcher returned and appeared astonished and puzzled at the disappearance of his bone. There I left him, still looking for it and sniffing at the open shop doors. He perhaps thought in his simplicity that some kind lady had picked it up and left it with one of the shopmen to be claimed by its rightful owner.

I had heard of such actions on the part of dogs before, but always with a smile; for we know the people who tell this kind of story--the dog-worshippers, or canophilists as they are sometimes called, a people weak in their intellectuals, and as a rule unveracious, although probably not consciously so. But now I had myself witnessed this thing, which, when read, will perhaps cause others to smile in their turn.

But what is one to say of such an action? Just now we are all of us, philosophers included, in a muddle over the questions of mind and intellect in the lower animals, and just how much of each element goes to the composition of any one act; but probably most persons would say at once that the action of the little red dog in Regent Street was purely intelligent. I am not sure. The swiftness, smoothness, and certainty with which the whole thing was carried out gave it the appearance of a series of automatic movements rather than a reasoned act which had never been rehearsed.

Recently during my country rambles I have been on the look-out for the small red dog, and have met with several interesting examples in the southern counties. One, in Hampshire, moved me to laughter like that small animal at Charterhouse Hinton.

This was at Sway, a village near Lymington. A boy, mounted on a creaking old bike, was driving some cows to the common, and had the greatest difficulty in keeping on while following behind the lazy beasts on a rough track among the furze bushes; and behind the boy at a distance of ten yards trotted the little red dog, tongue out, looking as happy and proud as possible. As I passed him he looked back at me as if to make sure that I had seen him and noted that he formed part of that important procession. On another day I went to the village and renewed my acquaintance with the little fellow and heard his history. Everybody praised him for his affectionate disposition and his value as a watch-dog by night, and I was told that his mother, now dead, had been greatly prized, and was the smallest red dog ever seen in that part of Hampshire.

Some day one of the thousand writers on “man’s friend” will conceive the happy idea of a chapter or two on _the_ dog--the universal cur--and he will then perhaps find it necessary to go abroad to study this well-marked dwarf variety, for with us he has fallen on evil days. There is no doubt that the muzzling order profoundly affected the character of our dog population, since it went far towards the destruction of the cur and of mongrels--the races already imperilled by the extraordinary predominance of the fox-terrier. The change was most marked in the metropolis, and after Mr. Long’s campaign I came to the conclusion that here at all events the little red dog had been extirpated. He, with other varieties of the cur, was the dog of the poor, and when the muzzle deprived him of the power to fend for himself, he became a burden to his master. But I was mistaken; he is still with us, even here in London, though now very rare.