ONE of the remotest visions of my infancy—dim as the pearly dawn itself—is of two dogs called Flora and Danger, priest-grey and brown-and-yellow terriers respectively, which filled a prominent place in my baby regard. They soon vanished from the scene, and some time elapsed before they were succeeded by Fido—a small, sleek, short-haired, brown dog, resembling an English terrier, which was partly my own property, and, much more than any doll or toy, the darling of my early childhood.

I fancy Fido was not very well descended, and that his small size was due to accident, or to some arresting process practised in his puppyhood. But he was a well-made little dog; he had a keen tiny face, with erect ears; and he was amazingly agile in his habits. In fact his agility, together with his audacity, brought about his untimely death—the manner of which remains, at this distance of time, more impressed on my mind than any incident in his short life.

I remember the scene and circumstances as if the event had happened yesterday. My mother had strolled beyond the garden to “the front of the brae,” as it was called, or the brow of the green, grassy hill on which the old white house was built. It commanded a wide stretch of links or downs, met by the blue girdle of the Frith, having for its fringe, all along the coast, clusters of ancient villages—fishing or trading—with red-tiled or blue-slated houses, and round-belfried or sharp-pointed steeples of parish kirks.

I think no place was ever fresher or sunnier than that “front of the brae” on a summer morning, though in winter it was a bleak and windy station enough. Some young colts, feeding, as they usually did, on the links, had ventured to the summit of the brae, and were approaching the stackyard. Fido was scampering among the yellow ragwort and purple bur thistles in my mother’s vicinity, and on the impulse of the moment she sent him after the young horses.

The rash suggestion was only too acceptable. Without a shade of hesitation or fear, the morsel of a dog made a dart at the heels of what were the hugest elephants to him, and though the colts had turned to retreat, he reached them in time to be spurned by one of the flying hoofs, and to fall down with his back or neck broken.

I have a vivid recollection of the consternation and grief of the little group that gathered in the great kitchen, into which the lifeless little dog was carried—of one of Fido’s young mistresses wildly entreating to have wine put within the half-open jaws of the dead dog—of the grave shake of the head with which some senior negatived the desperate proposal, and of my mother’s kindly distress at having caused the catastrophe, which had extinguished the spark of life in one of God’s happy creatures, and occasioned such affliction to the children.

I remember what a blight came over the bright day; how I rose from my dinner in a passion of sorrow, because in a moment of forgetfulness I had begun to lay aside some scrap for the dog which had ceased to need scraps; and how I walked in the garden among the Maundy roses and tall white Canterbury bells, and gathered—to store for a melancholy memorial—some early seeds of the nasturtium with which the little animal had been fond of playing, and in which there remained the marks of his tiny teeth. I have had greater losses since then, but I have not forgotten that first shock and stab of irretrievable separation.

To console us children for being deprived of our pet—and, I daresay, as some small atonement in her own person—my mother furnished us with money to buy another dog; an act in which there was a departure from the family practice of not spending what little money was to spare unnecessarily, and, above all, of not accustoming the children to anything that could be regarded as extravagance or self-indulgence. In our whole connection with dogs, this was the only instance in which one became ours by purchase.

I cannot recall that it grated on my feelings that the empty place of my dead pet should be filled up. I daresay I made some protest at first—that I would not be consoled, and that I could never like (we say like in Scotland, where an English child would say love) another doggie as I had liked Fido. But I was not then sufficiently faithful—or shall I say proud and passionate enough?—to be long able to resist the prospect of the dreary blank in the house and in my affections having another occupant, with the wholesome hope that I might take to it and be comforted, though I did not forget Fido.

I know I went in great glee, in the company of a sister a little older than myself, to the village where we had heard of a suitable dog for sale—indeed, I think we had gone and inspected it previously—and where we were to pay down our purchase-money—it was no more than five shillings—and receive our prize, which had belonged previously to a tradesman.

The dog was a small black and white animal, with straight sleek hair, and a pretty round face, set between pendant ears. I was a timid child, and did not venture to lay hands on our purchase while it was yet strange to us, and my sister undertook to carry it home in her arms. On our way we encountered a gentleman who was an acquaintance of the family, and who, not understanding how we were situated, insisted on shaking hands with us children. My sister was compelled partly to let go her captive—it did not escape, it only scrambled to her shoulder, from which she was unable to dislodge it, and where, to our affront, it stood barking wrathfully at the new-comer.

The dog had been named “Jessie Mackie,” a very human title, of which we did not approve for a dog, and so we called her “Rona,” the name of a dog of a friend’s friend. The title struck our fancy, and we believed that it had belonged originally to an island on the west coast of Scotland—rather a dignified source for a name. But I cannot say that I ever met any person who had visited the island of Rona, or who could tell exactly whereabouts in the Atlantic—from wild St. Kilda to wooded Rothesay—it was to be found.

Rona answered our expectations, and soon took Fido’s position in the house. She was a thoroughly worthy little dog; I don’t know that she was very clever, but I can vouch that she was exceedingly companionable. In her prime she was perfectly good-humoured to her friends, though I do not think that she was ever very accessible to strangers. She had queer ways of her own. She was very fond of fish, to which, as an article of food, dogs have either a great liking or loathing. She slept on the lower shelf of a cupboard, reserved for her use, in a dressing-room attached to the nursery. She would retire there for a morning snooze, and members of the family, unaware of her proximity, would be startled, on going into the nursery, by loud snores, exactly resembling those of a human being guilty of snoring, proceeding from the dressing-room at high noon. She had been taught to beg, and had great faith in the efficacy of the supplication. She would be found in a room alone begging with great patience to a closed door, and confidently expecting it would yield to the appeal.

Rona was peculiarly affected by certain kinds of music, as dogs sometimes are. I have read different opinions expressed of the impression made by music on dogs, with an attempt to decide whether it is pain or pleasure which is produced on the creature by the melody that awakens its attention and rouses its emotions. The preponderance of evidence tends to indicate that it is pain, or at least some form of fear or distress, which music causes in the dog. What I remember of Rona’s behaviour when so excited confirms this idea, though we children chose to class the performance as singing, and boasted loudly of it to our companions, who used to wait breathlessly for it to begin, and were filled with delighted wonder, amounting to awe, when the dog was got to exhibit its talent. The sound of a piano or of singing did not move her in the least, but an accordion drawn out, or a violin played, touched the chord which vibrated to music in Rona’s composition. She would generally retire beneath a chair or sofa, with a restless, disturbed air (I suppose we made out her withdrawal to be the assumed modesty of a great performer); and if the music were continued, she would raise her head and utter in prolonged bays and howls what, I am satisfied, was her protest against the sound which, for some occult reason, both excited and rendered her miserable. It was an evident relief to her when the concert, in which she had felt bound to bear a part, was brought to a conclusion.

I think it was for Rona that we children first manufactured a set of garments which figured on more than one dog. There was a pair of flannel pantaloons, into which we inserted the dog’s unwilling legs, fastening the pantaloons by strings across her back. There was a flannel gown, which we called a dressing-gown, and suspended round her shoulders. The costume was finished by a round cap, like a Highland bonnet, which we put on her head, tying it under her chin—or jaw: on high occasions we stuck a feather unto this cap.

Of course Rona objected strongly, in her own mind, to these incongruous decorations, though she had to submit outwardly to our will on that point. The pantaloons, after they had been donned, were least in her way, and she would appear to forget them and run about in them without protest for hours.

I remember one day, during a period of rainy weather, when even the sandy roads of that district were wet and miry, that an elder sister, who had gone to make calls in the village, came back half-a-mile with Rona. The dog had stolen out and kept at a safe distance in the rear, till she considered that she was beyond the danger of being marched home, when she capered to the front, and her unconscious companion not only perceived who was her attendant, but discovered, to her mingled diversion and chagrin, that the dog was dressed in that supremely absurd pair of pantaloons, plentifully bespattered with mud.

By the time the younger members of the family were sent to school, poor Rona was up in years, and had become peevish and snappish in her growing infirmities, so that it was judged advisable that she should be quietly put out of the way in her mistresses’ absence. When we came home jubilant, we found no Rona waddling out to greet us, and I am afraid we had so many to meet, and so much to occupy us, that we hardly missed our humble friend.

A contemporary of Rona’s was a tall, gaunt, black—with silver hairs, peculiarly ugly, and valuable sheep-dog, which was my father’s friend. His ugliness was the result either of disease or of an accident, which had removed a portion of the lip and exposed his teeth on one side, but which did not impair his health, or detract from his merit as a wise and an efficient collie. His name, which was not given by us, was peculiar. I imagine it was either a mistake or a corruption. Instead of being termed “Yarrow,” “Tweed,” or “Heather,” the traditional names for Scotch collies, he was called “Gasto,” which I have a notion must have been a perversion of “Gaston,” though how a Scotch collie came to bear a chivalrous French Christian name I have not the faintest idea.

He was a dog that had his proper business to mind, and did not take much account of us children. Shepherds who have the rearing of such dogs do not encourage their association with children, and regard it, where it occurs, as liable to be a source of deterioration in an animal which is bred to endure hardship, and to live under a sense of responsibility. And when the creature is trained to perfection, it is as valuable and important a member of the establishment on a sheep-farm as an ox or a horse on another farm. Gasto was one of the gravest dogs I ever saw, far too sober for play of any kind. Looking back, I cannot help associating him with wintry blasts and snow-drifts, in which he is buffeting the blast and wading through the drift, intent on his calling.

Gasto knew but one master, my father, and for him he lived and laboured with a still, deep devotion. On one occasion, when my father was attacked by a dangerous illness, and confined to his room for a time, the sheep-dog wandered about disconsolately, declining even to attend to his ordinarily rigidly discharged office, at the bidding of any other than his master. As the days wore on, about the time that the disease approached its crisis, the dog stationed himself on the garden wall, and in a manner foreign to his usually rather impassive, preoccupied demeanour when he was not about his work, howled dismally—conduct which, however well meant, was not calculated to cheer the invalid, or the watchers in the sick-room. The dog then refused to touch food, and it was feared he would die. After every other mode of coaxing was tried, without effect, Gasto was taken into the room where my father, by that time recovering, lay in bed—was shown his master, and spoken to by him. I don’t think the dog attempted to leap on the bed, or did more than wag his bushy tail with immense relief and repressed gladness; but when a plate with his food was offered to him in the loved presence, he ate it quietly without further demur. Forthwith he went about his business, content to discharge it faithfully, as a trust committed to him, and to wait hopefully for the reappearance of his master.

Poor Gasto, to my father’s great regret and indignation, was cruelly poisoned by some ill-disposed persons in the neighbourhood. Another dog of ours fell a victim to their misdeeds. He was a huge, fawn-coloured, young watch-dog, named “Neptune,” that was thus summarily cut off before he had got the beyond boisterous uncouthness of this hobble-de-hoyism.

I have come to the advent of a prized dog, so long a much esteemed member of the household, that she was regarded, not only by ourselves but our friends, as one of the family. She was a pure bred and fine terrier, given when she was about a year old to my brother, as the parting gift of a friend about to sail for Ceylon. She was dear for his sake as well as for her own, but she soon needed no external recommendation to make her a chief favourite. I have only a hazy recollection of her introduction to us, but a fragment of her illustrious pedigree, which was imparted with befitting seriousness, lingers in my mind. “Her mother was a lineal descendant of the dog that fought the lion at Warwick.” What sort of lion-baiting this was? how it happened to take place at Warwick? what was the date of the event? whether the whole story were not a tradition of the great Bevis? were questions never answered. But we were accustomed to repeat the assertion as a solemn attestation to Skatta’s claims to superiority.

Skatta, like Rona, was named for an island in the West—an island which has a substantial existence. Yet though we were told, and implicitly believed for many a day, that the dog was of Western origin, a Skye terrier, this was ultimately disputed. I have been assured that she was a fine Dandie Dinmont terrier, of the renowned mustard species, and that she and her forbears ought to have been traced to pastoral Liddesdale in the South, and not to the corries of Cuchullin in the Land of Mist. I am sorry that I am not possessed of sufficient erudition to settle the point.

In the eyes of connoisseurs Skatta was a beautiful dog, though I am doubtful whether the uninitiated world would have perceived the extent of her claims. Her colour hovered between a sulphur yellow and a buff. She was short in the legs and rather long in the body, but not with such an ungainly length as I am told a true Skye terrier should show, just as a genuine Belgian canary-bird ought to be slightly hump-backed. The hair on her back was rough and wiry—one of her good points in our estimation; it was softer on her breast, legs, and feathery tail, and on her head, especially in the case of an admired lock that lay on her forehead, the texture of which was almost as fine as that of floss-silk. Her acute ears were of course erect. Her subtlest of noses was, in accordance with her complexion, red, not black. Her honest affectionate eyes were of warm hazel.

Skatta was by instinct alone an excellent game dog, and her glory was to be in attendance on the taking down of a stack in the yard, to sit watching with all her wits about her, and to pounce on and despatch each rat as it appeared. There were rabbit warrens in the neighbourhood, not without danger to the terrier. In her hot pursuit of the rabbits, she would follow them into their burrows by passages and windings too narrow for her to turn herself in, while the sandy soil fell down behind her, and she was detained till her absence was remarked. The dog’s half-suffocated yelps indicated her subterranean place of imprisonment, when aid was speedily lent to restore her to the upper world.

On other occasions Skatta’s feet were caught in the traps set by the rabbit-catchers, and though her bones were strong enough to resist the pressure, and she was not maimed, as so many of our cats became, but generally freed herself after a struggle, and returned home triumphantly without much injury, in two instances she was a serious sufferer from the accident. In the first it was not known that she had been caught in a trap, and nobody guessed why she paid such sedulous attention to one of her front paws, till after an interval of weeks, in the face of an impending lameness, a close examination detected a portion of brass-wire bound tightly round, and eating into the festering flesh. At a much later date, when Skatta was an old dog, her master missed her from his heel after crossing one of these warrens. It was a dark night, and he could not stay to search for her, even if it had been possible to find her. He trusted that, if she had been caught in a trap, she would free herself, as she had been wont to do, and follow on his steps. As she remained absent, however, the entire night—an unexampled incident in her history—my brother started early next morning in search of her, and found her lying unable to stir, with one of her legs terribly lacerated. She was carried carefully home, and after being tended for weeks, during which she showed great patience and gratitude, she was restored to the full use of her limbs.

In spite of the danger, the rabbit-haunted links, with their wild thyme, cowslips, and harebells in the seasons, presented the utmost fascination in life to Skatta. After the links, she cared for the weasel and rat-frequented fields and ditches of the strath, with their bugloses and poppies, brooklime and irises; but the links formed par excellence her happy hunting-ground. I have heard her master say that on returning home, or taking a stroll before retiring to rest on a summer night, her mute entreaty was sometimes so irresistible, that he would turn away from the house and take the path to the solemn sea and the silent links, to grant her the half-hour’s indulgence she besought.

At one period she walked with the women of the family every afternoon, and amused them by her uncontrollable disappointment and chagrin—though she was for the most part a modest, reasonable dog—when they resorted to the rocks and the sands as their place of promenade. She would sit down beside them while they rested, and begin to shiver, though she was in perfect health, and to whimper under her breath a reproach for their perversity. Why were they so provoking? Why could they not have walked on the springy turf of the links, or by the pleasant field path? Then she might have hunted to her heart’s content, and still have been in their company.

When my brother was at home, Skatta made a marked distinction between him and the rest of the family, acknowledging him pointedly as her master, and electing herself his constant companion. When he first left home, she was very disconsolate for a few days, and sat a good deal on the garden wall, howling as Gasto did when my father was ill. After a time she seemed to make up her mind to the separation, and transferred her primary allegiance in a measure, and for the moment, to my father. (Though she was of the female sex herself, she gave no support to the rights of women, farther than being social and happy with us girls.) Her real master’s absence was sometimes for many months, and lasted over a period of years; but the moment he reappeared on the scene she returned unfailingly to her first love. So perfect was the good understanding between man and dog, and so blameless was the conduct of the latter as a rule, that I have heard my brother say he only struck his dog twice in the whole course of their long connection. On the first occasion the blow was administered to correct a fault, but on the second his stick fell on the wrong dog in a combat which had been thrust on Skatta, and which he was trying to stop. He averred that he could not bear to look his dog in the face afterwards, because of the meek wonder with which she submitted to the unjust stroke, and, as he complained, he had not the comfort of explaining to her that it was all a mistake.

Skatta was never more than friendly to people outside her family, and there was one family friend whom she, like most reflective dogs, held in abhorrence. She hated the doctor, and laid aside her peaceful character to growl out her enmity every time she was in his company. I have heard various reasons assigned for the dislike of dogs to doctors.[C] Do their delicate noses detect and find fault with any subtle aroma hanging about the man who orders drugs? Are the dogs’ affectionate hearts moved by sympathy with the signs of suffering and anxiety, which they are quick to read, in the faces of the family? The dumb animals are clever enough to connect these tokens with the presence of the doctor, while they are not sufficiently well informed—given to leap at conclusions as they are—to comprehend that he is there to relieve distress instead of being its author.

If dogs detest doctors, they do not often extend their dislike to clergymen. Skatta was not only on perfectly civil terms with the “minister” of her master’s kirk, she herself knew the Sunday, and was disposed to respect its observance like a true-blue Presbyterian. She did not, to be sure, go to the kirk like the dog of one of the ministers in the village,[D] but she consented to stay at home without any protest, and only burst out and greeted her family rather uproariously on their return in the ranks of their fellow-worshippers.

On other occasions, to stay at home when her friends were going abroad, or to submit to confinement, was so severe a trial of Skatta’s philosophy, that it was the one decree which found and left her rebellious. It was no easy task to detain a dog that, when shut into a room on the second floor of the house, with the windows closed, broke through a pane of glass, and precipitated herself twelve or fifteen feet to the ground; and with such rapidity did she clear the glass in taking the leap, that she was not punished for her defiant temerity by more than a few inconsiderable scratches and bruises.

She once walked a distance of fifteen miles with her master, and at the end of the journey was tied up in a stable, since he was going where she could not conveniently accompany him. I need not say that she gnawed through the string, seized an opportunity, when the stable-door was open, to make her escape, and, not being able to trace her master, ran the whole way home again, and arrived in the course of two more hours, very travel-stained, tired, and hungry, but content. This is nothing of a feat compared to that performed by an Argyleshire terrier, which, having been conveyed in a carriage through one of the passes into an entirely different district, set off at the first available moment, and crossed a great solitary mountain range—taking a week to do it—arriving at last, a gaunt but happy skeleton, at what it persisted in regarding as its own door. How the poor animal subsisted in the meantime was only known to Him who feedeth the young ravens when they cry.

I remember Skatta’s being lent to a sportsman, who was very desirous of availing himself of her powers; but no bribe of game or sport would detain her from her friends. So soon as she was let loose, she broke away and rushed back to them, the quick pattering of her feet sounding in every room of the house, her gleaming eyes and vibrating tail appealing to each member of the family in turn with a “Here I am, you see; I could not and I would not stay away.”

The pertinacity with which Skatta followed her master sometimes produced awkward results. He was attending the funeral of an old retainer of the family, to whom he desired to pay particular respect. He believed that the dog was safe at a distance when he was motioned to a place of honour close to the open grave. He observed a little disturbance among the ring of mourners, and, to his horror, discovered Skatta in the centre, by his side, with her head poked inquisitively forward over what was to her a great black hole.

Skatta came to us when some of us were young enough to dress her in Rona’s cast-off clothes; she lived sufficiently long with us to see the steps of the youngest grow slow, and care settling on their brows. She was a silent witness to many changes—to the passing away of one honoured face, the breaking up of the old home, the dispersion of the family. She herself was so old that both her sight and hearing were nearly gone, and she could hardly answer to the signal of the master she had loved so well. Her life was becoming a burden to her—she was getting diseased as well as infirm. It was feared she would prove dangerous to a child in the house where she lived, as she had always been jealous of children where her master was concerned, disliking to see him take them into his arms, sniffing and growling at them if they came too near him according to her ideas, and fiercely resenting any liberty taken with herself under the circumstances. So old Skatta was sentenced—with what regret may be imagined—to a death quick and painless, for the sake of higher humanity.

A contemporary of Skatta’s was a huge black and white watch-dog, named “Foam,” a good-natured, but formidable creature, which, when it was let loose, used to come bounding to greet us, and such was its impetus that, when it planted a paw on each shoulder, it caused each one of us to reel and stagger under its caress.

An interregnum in our connection with dogs occurred, during which, as I have heard masters and mistresses say after the loss of a confidential and trusty servant, various unavailable retainers passed across the domestic stage without making a lengthened stay, or filling successfully the vacant post.

There was “James Craig,” a white, straight-haired terrier, boasting the becoming contrast of lively black eyes and a black nose. His temper was irascible, and his life was rendered so unendurable to him by the mischievous attentions of several lads, whose office chanced to be in the vicinity of his home, and who insisted on stamping their feet at him, that he in turn made life unbearable to his human neighbours, and had to be banished from the establishment. His fate was hard. He was always an excitable dog, and he managed, while quite in his senses, to inspire some credulous panic-stricken people with the notion that he was mad, under which delusion he was stoned to death.

There was “Bobby,” a pretty, but weak-minded black spaniel, which also suffered a violent death. He had not the sense to get out of the way of a coach which drove over him.

There was a poor dog—the very name of which I have forgotten—that was summarily shot by a sanguinary gamekeeper for deserting his master’s side, for one brief moment, to encroach on a jealously guarded preserve.

There was “Massey Redan,” a promising little pepper-and-salt terrier, that was picked up at the door of the house in the town where we then lived, and driven off in a “cadger’s” cart by a company of successful amateur dog-stealers.

There was “Juno,” a brown retriever, so crazy about taking to the water that she would desert her master to spend the whole day by the sea, plunging in for whatever stick or stone the children, who delighted in her swimming powers, might throw her.

There was “William Alexander,” another retriever, a handsome, powerful, jet-black dog, which had a predilection for nuts, and would pounce on a sack in a grocer’s shop, abstract, crack, and eat the contents for her delectation. She used to sit up on her haunches by her master’s side while he sat writing or reading, and when William Alexander thought they had both had enough of the work, he would slap his master smartly on the arm with his paw in order to call his attention to the fact.

His master had trained the dog to bring him his boots every morning; but so headlong was William Alexander’s race with them, up and down stairs, that he would have thrown to the ground any unhappy individual who had happened to impede his progress. Indeed there was always something of a whirlwind about the dog, and when to his restlessness and boisterousness were added the reflection of the same qualities in a child visitor, the house seemed too small to hold the two.

William Alexander had a remarkable objection to seeing any of his friends ill in bed, and on such occasions would begin to growl as at a personal offence.

The dog had a trick, in accordance with his species, of bringing everything to his master. Once, when a pet canary-bird got out of its cage, and began flying wildly about the room, William Alexander caught it, closing his great jaws upon it with a snap, so that it was lost to sight, and the spectators never doubted killed on the instant. But when he delivered up the bird to his master, it was uninjured save by fright.

Poor William Alexander tried this trick once too often. He was caught attempting to lift a baby, which happened to be in the same house with him, by the breast of its white frock, to take it to his master. He was conducting the operation with the greatest gentleness and care, but naturally the baby’s mother had an insuperable prejudice against the performance, and William Alexander too had to be sent away.

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