I. Man's First Friend

Description

This section is from the book "British Dogs At Work", by A. Croxton Smith. Also available from Amazon: British Dogs at Work.

I. Man's First Friend

Mr. Kipling, in one of those happy phrases of his, has spoken of the dog as man's first friend, a phrase which correctly describes the relationship between the human and canine races. This is an idea which Mr. Maeterlinck has beautifully amplified in his charming essay on the "Death of a Little Dog." If you have not read it, may I advise you to do so without delay. "Man loves the dog," he says, "but how much more ought he to love it, if he considered, in the inflexible harmony of the laws of nature, the sole exception, which is that love of a being that succeeds in piercing, in order to draw closer to us, the partitions, every elsewhere impermeable, that separate the species. We are alone, absolutely alone, on this chance planet, and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. A few creatures fear us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us." Exactly when this friendship was first formed and cemented into an alliance for the mutual benefit of both it is difficult to say. We do know, however, that the dog existed in a domesticated state in prehistoric times, while the pages of history bear ample testimony to the esteem in which the Canidce were held by the ancients. It is easy to conceive the many uses to which the dog was put by primitive man, especially in the direction of providing food for the larder. Hounds were early subdivided into those that hunted by sight and those that hunted by scent, and we can see how the peculiar instincts of each were specialised and fostered by selection. As the necessity of employing the dog as a food-provider became less he would naturally come more and more into requisition for purposes of sport, while his services were in continuous demand as a guard of life and property.

Homer has drawn largely upon the canine race to aid him in his picturesque imagery, and scattered about Pope's translation we find abundant allusions, such as:

Not fiercer rush along the gloomy wood With rage insatiate, and with thirst of blood, Voracious hounds, that many a length before Their furious hunters drive the wounded boar; But if the savage turns his glaring eye, They howl aloof, and round the forest fly.

Old writers, greatly daring, have endeavoured to trace the descent of our hounds of to-day from the Homeric era. George Turberville, in his Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting, published in 1576, tells of a chronicle he saw in Brittany, written by John of Monmouth, an Englishman, who treats of the arrival into Italy of Æneas with his son Ascanius after the fall of Troy. Silinius, son of the latter, was killed accidentally by his own son Brutus when hunting, whereupon Brutus found it convenient to take a voyage into Greece, "to deliver certayne Troyans, his companions and allyes, which were yet there deteyned in captivitie since the destruction of Troye." With these he set sail, having on board a number of hounds and greyhounds, passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and "descended in the Isles of Armorie, which at this present is called Bretaigne in France by reason of his name was Brutus."

Turberville proceeds to recount some of the deeds of the Trojans, and winds up by saying: "I have thought it good to re-coumpte this historie that men may thereby understand that it is long since houndes have been used in Bretaigne, and I think certainly that these Troians were the first which brought the race of houndes into this country. For I find no history which maketh mention of longer continuance than that doth, and it is a thing most certaine, that the greatest part of the races of houndes whiche are in Fraunce and other countries adioyning, did come from the country of Bretaigne, excepting the race of white houndes, the whiche I think to be come from Barbary."

It is not my purpose here to inquire whether Turberville is right or wrong in his surmise, but we know that to this day in France there are breeds of beautiful hounds whose purity of lineage has been preserved with great jealousy by successive generations. That the Egyptians knew the dog about 3000 b.c. is evidenced by their monuments of that period, and traces of him have been found with the bones of Neolithic man. The mastiff was in these islands before the Romans discovered them; some hold that swift hunting dogs, such as the greyhound, were indigenous to Britain, and Oppian tells of hounds that hunted by scent being fed by "the fierce nation of painted Britons, who call them agasaei." However, it is scarcely necessary to dip further into the pages of history, as we may take it for granted that this strange friendship between man and dog dates back anterior to any time of which we have trustworthy record. Nor need I occupy space with a discussion as to the probable origin of the species, considering that authorities differ in their views. This much we know, that there are some hundred and eighty-nine distinct varieties of the domestic dog. Lest you should regard this as an exaggerated estimate I would point out that the Kennel Club recognises thirty-seven varieties of sporting, and thirty-eight varieties of non-sporting dogs as being sufficiently established in this country to warrant a separate classification at shows. These are as follow: -