DOGS IN LONDON

The subject of this paper, for which I am unable to find a properly descriptive title, will be certain changes noticeable during recent years in the dogs of the metropolis, and, in a less degree, of the country generally. At the same time there has been an improvement in the character of the dog population, due mainly to the weeding out of the baser breeds, but this matter does not concern us here; the change with which I propose to deal is in the temper and, as to one particular, the habits of the animal. This was the result of the famous (it used to be called the infamous) muzzling order of 1897, which restrained dogs throughout the country from following their ancient custom of quarrelling with and biting one another for the unprecedented period of two and a half years. Nine hundred days and over may not seem too long a period of restraint in the case of a being whose natural term runs to threescore years and ten, but in poor Tatters’ or Towzer’s brief existence of a dozen summers it is the equivalent of more than twenty years in the life of the human animal.

As a naturalist I was interested in the muzzling order, and after noting its effects my interest in the subject has continued ever since. It should also, I imagine, be a matter of interest and importance to all who have a special regard for the dog or who are “devoted to dogs,” who regard them as the “friends of man,” even holding with the canophilists of the old Youatt period of the last century that the dog was specially created to fill the place of man’s servant and companion. Strange to say, I have not yet met with any person of the dog-loving kind who has himself noticed any change in the temper or habits of the dog during the last fourteen or fifteen years or has any knowledge of it. One can only suppose--and this applies not only to those who cherish a peculiar affection for the dog, but to the numerous body of London naturalists as well--that the change was unmarked on account of the very long period during which the order was in force, when dogs were deprived of the power to bite, so that when the release came the former condition of things in the animal world was no longer distinctly remembered. It was doubtless assumed that, the muzzle once removed, all things were exactly as they had been before: if a few remembered and noticed the change, they failed to record it--at all events I have seen nothing about it in print. Circumstances made it impossible for me not to notice the immediate effect of the order, and at the end of the time to forget the state of things as they existed before its imposition.

I was probably more confined to London during the years 1897-9 than most persons who are keenly interested in animal life, and being so confined, I was compelled to gratify my taste or passion by paying a great deal of attention to the only animals that there are to observe in our streets, the dog being the most important. I also took notes of what I observed--my way of remembering not to forget; and, refreshing my mind by returning to them, I am able to recover a distinct picture of the state of things in the pre-muzzling times. It is a very different state from that of to-day. One thing that was a cause of surprise to me in those days was the large number of dogs, mostly mongrels and curs, to be seen roaming masterless about the streets. These I classed as pariahs, although they all, no doubt, had their homes in mean streets and courts, just as the ownerless pariah dogs in Eastern towns have their homes--their yard or pavement or spot of waste ground where they live and bask in the sun when not roaming in quest of food and adventures. Many of these London pariahs were wretched-looking objects, full of sores and old scars, some like skeletons and others with half their hair off from mange and other skin diseases. They were to be seen all over London, always hunting for food, hanging about areas, like the bone- and bottle-buyers, looking for an open dust-bin where something might be found to comfort their stomachs. They also haunted butchers’ shops, where the butcher kept a jealous eye on their movements and sent them away with a kick and a curse whenever he got the chance. Most, if not all, of these poor dogs had owners who gave them shelter but no food or very little, and probably in most cases succeeded in evading the licence duty.

There is no doubt that in the past the dog population of London was always largely composed of animals of this kind--“curs of low degree,” and a great variety of mongrels, mostly living on their wits. An account of the dogs of London of two or three or four centuries ago would have an extraordinary interest for us now, but, unfortunately, no person took the pains to write it. Caius, our oldest writer on dogs, says of “curres of the mungrel and rascall sort”--the very animals we want to know about: “Of such dogs as keep not their kind, of such as are mingled out of sundry sortes not imitating the conditions of some one certaine Spece, because they resemble no notable shape, nor exercise any worthy property of the true, perfect, and gentle kind, it is not necesarye that I write any more of them, but to banish them as unprofitable implements out of the boundes of my Booke.” It is regrettable that he did “banish” them, as he appears to have been something of an observer on his own account. Had he given us a few pages on the life and habits of the “rascall sort” of animal, his _Booke of Englishe Dogges_, which after so many centuries is still occasionally reprinted, would have been as valuable to us now as Turner’s on British birds (1544) and Willughby’s half a century later on the same subject, and as Gould’s brilliant essay on the habits of British ants--which, by the way, has never been reprinted--and as Gilbert White’s classic, which came later in the eighteenth century.

That the bond uniting man and dog in all instances when the poor brute was obliged to fend for himself in the inhospitable streets of London was an exceedingly frail one was plainly seen when the muzzling order of 1897 was made. An extraordinary number of apparently ownerless dogs, unmuzzled and collarless, were found roaming about the streets and taken by hundreds every week to the lethal chamber. In thirty months the dog population of the metropolis had decreased by about one hundred thousand. The mongrels and dogs of the “rascall sort” had all but vanished, and this was how the improvement in the character of the dog population mentioned before came about immediately. But a far more important change had been going on at the same time--the change in the temper of our dogs; and it may here be well to remark that this change in disposition was not the result of the weeding-out process I have described. The better breeds are not more amiable than the curs of low degree. The man who has made a friend and companion of the cur will tell you that he is as nice-tempered, affectionate, faithful, and intelligent as the nobler kinds, the dogs of “notable shape.”

Let us now go back to the muzzling time of 1897-9, and I will give here the substance of the notes I made at the time. They have among my notes on many subjects a peculiar interest to me as a naturalist because in the comments I made at the time I ventured to make a prediction which has not been fulfilled. I was astonished and delighted to find that (on this one occasion) I had proved a false prophet.

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The dog-muzzling question (I wrote) does not interest me personally, since I keep no dog, nor love to see so intelligent and serviceable a beast degraded to the position of a mere pet or plaything--a creature that has lost or been robbed of its true place in the scheme of things. Looking at the matter from the outside, simply as a student of the ways of animals, I am surprised at the outcry made against Mr. Long’s order, especially here in London, where there is so great a multitude of quite useless animals. No doubt a large majority of the dogs of the metropolis are household pets, pure and simple, living indoors in the same rooms as their owners, in spite of their inconvenient instincts. On this subject I have had my say in an article on “The Great Dog Superstition,” for which I have been well abused; the only instinct of the dog with which I am concerned at present is that of pugnacity. This is like his love of certain smells disgusting to us, part and parcel of his being, so that for a dog to be perfectly gentle and without the temper that barks and bites must be taken as evidence of its decadence--not of the individual but of the race or breed or variety. Whether this fact is known or only dimly surmised by dog-lovers, more especially by those who set the fashion in dogs, we see that in recent years there has been a distinct reaction against the more degenerate kinds[1]--those in whose natures the jackal and wild-dog writing has quite or all but faded out--the numerous small toy terriers; the Italian greyhound, shivering like an aspen leaf; the drawing-room pug, ugliest of man’s (the breeder’s) many inventions; the pathetic Blenheim and King Charles spaniels, the Maltese, the Pomeranian, and all the others that have, so to speak, rubbed themselves out by acquiring a white liver to please their owners’ fantastic tastes. A more vigorous beast is now in favour, and one of the most popular is undoubtedly the fox-terrier. This is assuredly the doggiest dog we possess, the most aggressive, born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. From my own point of view it is only right that fox-terriers and all other good fighters should have liberty to go out daily into the streets in their thousands in search of shindies, to strive with and worry one another to their hearts’ content; then to skulk home, smelling abominably of carrion and carnage, and, hiding under their master’s sofa, or other dark place, to spend the time licking their wounds until they are well again and ready to go out in search of fresh adventures. For God hath made them so.

[Footnote 1: Alas! since these notes were made, fourteen years ago, there has been a recrudescence of the purely woman’s drawing-room pet dog. The wretched griffon, looking like a mean cheap copy of the little Yorkshire--one of the few small pet animals which has not wholly lost its soul--appears to have vanished. But the country has now been flooded with the Pekinese, and one is made to loathe it from the constant sight of it in every drawing-room and railway carriage and motor-car and omnibus, clasped in a woman’s arms.]

But this is by no means the view of the gentle ladies and mild-tempered gentlemen who own them, nor, I dare say, of any canophilist, whether the owner of a dog or not. What these people want is that their canine friends shall have the same liberty enjoyed by themselves to make use of our streets and parks without risk of injury or insult; that they shall be free to notice or not the salutations and advances of others of their kind; to graciously accept or contemptuously refuse, with nose in air, according to the mood they may happen to be in or to the state of their digestive organs, an invitation to a game of romps. This liberty and safety they do now undoubtedly enjoy, thanks to the much-abused muzzling order.

It is true that to the canine mind this may not be an ideal liberty: “For on a knight that hath neither hardihood nor valour in himself, may not another knight that hath more force in him reasonably prove his mettle; for many a time have I heard say that one is better than other.” These words, spoken by the Best Knight in the World, exactly fit the case of the fox-terrier, or any other vigorous variety whose one desire when he goes out into the world is reasonably to prove his mettle. ’Tis an ancient and noble principle of action, conceivably advantageous in certain circumstances; but in the conditions in which we human beings find ourselves placed it is not tolerated, and the valour and hardihood of our Percivals may no longer shine in the dark forests of this modern world.

Is it, then, so monstrous a thing, so great a tyranny, that the same restraint which has this long time been put upon the best and brightest of our own kind should now, for the public good, be imposed on our four-footed companions and servants! True, we think solely of ourselves when we impose the restraint, but incidentally (and entirely apart from the question of rabies) we are at the same time giving the greatest protection to the dogs themselves. Furthermore--and here we come to the point which mainly concerns us--the reflex effect of the muzzle on the dogs themselves may now be seen to be purely beneficial. Confining ourselves to London, the change in the animals’ disposition, or at all events behaviour, has been very remarkable. It has forcibly reminded me of the change of temper I have witnessed in a rude, semi-barbarous community when some one in authority has issued an order that at all festivals and other public gatherings every man shall yield up his weapons--knives, pistols, iron-handled whips, etc.--to some person appointed to receive them, or be turned back from the gates. The result of such a general disarmament has been an all-round improvement in temper, a disposition of the people to mix freely instead of separating into well-defined groups, each with some famous fighting-man, wearing a knife as long as a sword, for its centre; also instead of wild and whirling words, dust raised, and blood shed, great moderation in language, good humour, and reasonableness in argument.

In the same way we may see that our dogs grow less and less quarrelsome as they become more conscious of their powerlessness to inflict injury. Their confidence, and with it their friendliness towards one another, increases; the most masterful or truculent cease from bullying, the timid outgrow their timidity, and in their new-found glad courage dare to challenge the fiercest among them to a circular race and rough-and-tumble on the grass.

Now all this, from the point of view of those who make toys of sentient and intelligent beings, is or should be considered pure gain. Moreover, this undoubted improvement could not have come about if the muzzle had been the painful instrument that some dog-owners believe or say. It seems to me that those who cry out against torturing our dogs, as they put it, do not love their pets wisely and are bad observers. Undoubtedly every restraint is in some degree disagreeable, but it is only when an animal has been deprived of the power to exercise his first faculties and obey his most importunate impulses that the restraint can properly be described as painful. Take the case of a chained dog; he is miserable, as any one may see since there are many dogs in that condition, because eternally conscious of the restraint; and the perpetual craving for liberty, like that of the healthy energetic man immured in a cell, rises to positive torture. Again, we know that smell is the most important sense of the dog, that it is as much to him as vision to the bird; consequently, to deprive him of the use of this all-important faculty by, let us say, plugging up his nostrils, or by destroying the olfactory nerve in some devilish way known to the vivisectors, would be to make him perfectly miserable, just as the destruction of its sense of sight would make a bird miserable. By comparison the restraint of the muzzle is very slight indeed: smell, hearing, vision are unaffected, and there is no interference with free locomotion; indeed so slight is the restraint that after a while the animal is for the most part unconscious of it except when the impulse to bite or to swallow a luscious bit of carrion is excited.

We frequently see or hear of dogs that joyfully run off to fetch their muzzles when they are called to go out for a walk, or even before they are called if they but see any preparations being made for a walk: no person will contend that these are made unhappy by the muzzle, or that they deliberately weigh two evils in their mind and make choice of the lesser. The most that may be said is that these muzzle-fetchers are exceptions, though they may be somewhat numerous. For how otherwise can the fact be explained that some dogs, however ready and anxious to go for a walk they may be, will, on catching sight of the muzzle, turn away with tail between their legs and the expression of a dog that has been kicked or unjustly rebuked? My experience is that this attitude towards the muzzle of some dogs, which was quite common in the early muzzling days, is now rare and is dying out. The explanation, I think, is that as the muzzle is at first keenly felt as a restraint, imposed for no cause that the dog sees, it is in fact taken as a punishment, and resented as much as an undeserved blow or angry word would be. Every one who observes dogs must be familiar with the fact that they do very often experience the feeling of injury and resentment towards their human masters and companions. As a rule this feeling vanishes with the exciting cause; unfortunately, in some cases the sight of the muzzle becomes associated with the feeling and is slow to disappear.

But if dogs still exist in this city of dogs that show any sign of such a feeling when a muzzle is held up before them, we can see that even in these super-sensitive ones it vanishes the instant they are out of doors. Again, let any person watch the scores and hundreds of dogs that disport themselves in our grassy parks on any fine day, and he will quickly be convinced that not only are they happy but that they are far happier than any company of unmuzzled dogs thrown casually together. They are happier, madly happy, because they know--this knowledge having now filtered down into their souls--that it is perfectly safe for them to associate with their fellows, to be hail-fellow-well-met with all the dogs in the place, from the tiniest trembling lap-dog to the burliest and most truculent-looking bull-dog and the most gigantic St. Bernard or Danish boarhound. It is for us a happiness to see their confidence, their mad games, the way they all chase and tumble over one another, pretending to be furious and fighting a grand battle.

I do not say that there is any radical or any permanent change in the dog’s character. Like other beasts, he is morally and mentally non-progressive; that which the uninformed canophilist takes as progression is merely decadence. Remove the muzzle, and in a short time the habit which the muzzle has bred will fade away and the old bickerings and bullyings and blood-sheddings begin afresh. As it is, some dogs refuse to let their fighting temper rust in spite of the muzzle.

In Hyde Park some time ago I witnessed a sublime but bloodless battle between a Danish boarhound and a bull-dog. Neither of them lost consciousness of the muzzle which prevented them from “washing” their teeth in one another’s blood; they simply dashed themselves against each other, then drew back and dashed together again and again, with such fury that they would, no doubt, have succeeded in injuring each other had not their owners, assisted by several persons who were looking on, succeeded in drawing them apart.

One more instance of many which I have observed during the last two years. This is of a rather large and exceptionally powerful fox-terrier, who when out for a walk keeps a very sharp look-out for other dogs, and the instant he spies one not bigger than himself charges him furiously and with the impact hurls him to the ground, and, leaving him there, he dashes on in search of a fresh victim.

These are, however, exceptions, few individuals having intelligence enough to find out a new way of inflicting injury. As a rule the dog of ineradicably savage temper looks at his fellows as if saying, “Oh, for five minutes with this cursed muzzle off!” And the others, seeing his terrible aspect, are glad that the muzzle is on--a _blessed_ muzzle it is to them; and if they only knew what the doggie people were saying in the papers and could express their views on the subject, many of them would be heard to cry out, “Save us from our friends!”

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The muzzling order had thus appeared to me as a sort of Golden Age of the metropolitan dogs--and cats, for these too had incidentally been affected and strangely altered in their habits. And here I must say that all I wrote in my note-book about the dogs during and just after the muzzling period has been compressed into as short a space as possible, and all I wrote about the cats (as indirectly affected by the order) has been left out for want of space to deal with the entire subject in a single chapter.

When dog-owners were rejoicing to hear that the Board of Agriculture had come to the conclusion that rabies had been completely stamped out, and were eagerly looking forward to the day when they would be allowed to remove the hated muzzle from their pets, the prospect did not seem a very pleasant one to me and to many others who kept no pets. I was prepared once more for the old familiar but unforgotten spectacle of a big dog-fight in the streets producing a joyful excitement in a crowd, quickly sprung out of the stones of the pavement as it were, of loafers and wastrels of all kinds--keen sportsmen every one of them--a spectacle which was witnessed every day by any person who took a walk in London before the muzzling time. These scenes would be common again: in one day the dogs’ (and cats’) dream of perpetual peace would be ended, and all canines of a lofty spirit would go forth again like the good Arthurian knight and the Zulu warrior to wash his long-unused weapons in an adversary’s blood. But I was wrong. A habit had been formed in those two and a half years of restraint which did not lose its power at once: the something new which had come into the dog’s heart still held him. But it would not, it could not, hold him long.

Days followed and nothing happened--the Golden Age was still on. I walked the streets and watched and waited; then, when nearly a week had elapsed, I witnessed a fine old-fashioned dog-fight, with two dogs in a tangle on the ground biting and tearing each other with incredible fury and with all the growls and shrieks and other warlike noises appropriate to the occasion. From all parts around the “wond’ring neighbours ran” to look on, even as in former times down to the blessed year 1897.

“Just as I thought!” I exclaimed, and heartily wished that the President of the Board of Agriculture had made the muzzling order a perpetual one.

Other days and weeks followed and I witnessed no serious quarrel, and later it was so rare to see a dog-fight in the streets and parks, fights which one used to witness every day, that I began to think the new pacific habit had got a tighter grip on the animal than I could have believed. It would, I thought, perhaps take them two or three months to outgrow it and go back to their true natures.

I was wrong again: not months only but years have gone by--fourteen to fifteen years--and the beneficent change which had been wrought in those thirty months of restraint about which so great a pother was made at the time by dog-owners has continued to the present time.

We may say that in more senses than one the dogs (and cats) of the London of to-day are not the same beings we were familiar with in the pre-muzzling days. The object of that order we have seen was gained in the brief period of thirty months. Hydrophobia for the first time in the annals of England had ceased to exist, and so long as the quarantine law is faithfully observed will perhaps never return. Rabies broke out again in this country in 1917, its first reappearance since 1897, owing to some person having succeeded in eluding the quarantine order and bringing an infected dog to Plymouth. From that centre it spread to other parts of Devon and to Cornwall, and despite the prompt action of the authorities in imposing a new muzzling order in these two counties, the infection has spread to other parts of the country, and new muzzling orders are being issued just now--April 1919. Up till the year of 1897 the average number of persons who perished annually as the result of a dog-bite was twenty-nine. “Well, that’s not many in a population of forty millions,” cried the canophilists; but for twenty-nine who actually died of dog-madness, the most horrible shape in which death can appear to a human being, there were hundreds, and probably thousands, every year who lived for weeks and months in a constant state of apprehension lest some slight bite or abrasion received from the tooth of an angry or playful dog should result in that frightful malady.

This was unquestionably a great, a very great gain; but Mr. Long had builded better than he knew, and I am not sure that the accidental result, the change in the dog’s habits in one particular, will not be regarded as the most important gain by those who are fond of dogs and by all who recognise that, in spite of some disgusting instincts which can’t be changed, the dog is and probably always will be with us--our one and only four-footed associate.