Dog Stories from the "Spectator": Being anecdotes of the intelligence, reasoning power, affection and sympathy of dogs, selected from the correspondence columns of "The Spectator" — John Shaqi
Dog Stories from the "Spectator": Being anecdotes of the intelligence, reasoning power, affection and sympathy of dogs, selected from the correspondence columns of "The Spectator"
General
Dog Stories from the "Spectator": Being anecdotes of the intelligence, reasoning power, affection and sympathy of dogs, selected from the correspondence columns of "The Spectator"
Dogs -- Folklore
Many years ago I had a similar experience to Mr. Frank Wright. A
likeness of myself, head and shoulders, drawn in chalk from a
photograph, and enlarged to nearly life size, hung on the dining-room
wall of a house I then occupied. One evening my wife silently called my
attention to a young English terrier, who had not been very long with
us, looking up at it very steadfastly. He regarded it for about a minute
in silence, and at last broke out into a loud bark, which I supposed to
mean that in his opinion the wall was not my proper place, and that only
an evil genius could have set anything like me in such a position.
G.
[_June 2, 1894._]
You were so good as to insert my little account of the politeness of a
parrot in the _Spectator_, will you now allow me also to bear witness to
the recognition of a likeness by a dog? Some time ago I was painting two
portraits in the country, and one day by chance I placed the picture of
my hostess on the ground. Immediately her old spaniel came and gazed
intently at the face for several seconds. Then he smelt at the canvas,
and, unsatisfied, walked round and investigated the back. Finally,
having discovered the deception, he turned away in manifest disgust, and
nothing that we could do or say, on that day or on any other, would
induce that dog to look at that picture again. We then tried him by
putting my portrait of his master also on the ground, but he simply gave
it a kind of casual contemptuous side-glance and took no further notice
of it. We attributed this not to any difference in the merits or
demerits of the two portraits, but simply to the fact that the dog felt
he had been deceived once, but was not to be so taken in again.
LOUISA STARR CANZIANI.
RECOGNITION BY ANIMALS OF PICTURES.
[_Sept. 7, 1889._]
Thirty years ago I was staying at Langley, near Chippenham, with a lady
who was working a large screen, on which she depicted in "raised" work
(as it was then called) a life-sized cat on a cushion. The host, a
sportsman now dead, was much struck with the similarity to life of the
cat, so he fetched his dog (alas! like too many of the species), a
cat-hater. The animal made a dead set at the (wool) cat, and but for the
master's vigorous clutching him by the collar, the cushion would have
been torn into atoms. I related this tale lately in Oxford, and my
hearer told me that a friend in the Bevington Road had just painted a
bird on a fire-screen, and her cat flew at it.
My own old dog, Scaramouch (a pet of the Duke of Albany's in his
undergraduate days), disliked being washed, and when I showed him a
large _Graphic_ picture of a child scrubbing a fox-terrier in a tub, he
turned his head away ruefully, and would not look at his brother in
adversity.
J. M. HULBERT.
_DOG FRIENDSHIPS._
DOG FRIENDS.
[_Feb. 16, 1889._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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