Dogtown: Being Some Chapters from the Annals of the Waddles Family Set Down in the Language of HousepeopleWright, Mabel Osgood
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Dogtown: Being Some Chapters from the Annals of the Waddles Family Set Down in the Language of Housepeople
Wright, Mabel Osgood
Dogs -- Juvenile fiction
Now the race law for puppies and grown dogs is quite different, even as
are those laws that govern childhood and manhood among House People.
Actions that are tolerated and even encouraged in puppyhood are read as
insults when done by a dog of two years, and bear a penalty.
In spite of Waddles’s instructions and warnings, Lumberlegs was either
heedless of the law, often deliberately breaking it, or else from his
size and strength felt himself superior to it; which it was Anne could
never tell. Perhaps it was because he was unevenly developed, for he
had all a man dog’s jealousy and craving for the exclusive attention
of his owners, while he kept his baby playfulness and total disregard
of food rights. So trouble befell one fine day, like rain from sudden
clouds that no one has noticed gathering.
After it had happened Anne was continually remembering little things
that might have given her warning.
Waddles had a favourite afternoon station on the end of the porch that
commanded the front and barn roads, the front door, and the garden also
if he turned his head. Suddenly Lumberlegs regularly appropriated this
watch-tower, and his length being so great that there was no view from
a back seat Waddles, after unavailing verbal remonstrance, was forced
to lie upon the grass.
[Illustration]
Waddles was the only dog that had been allowed in the dining room at
meal times, when he sat quietly under the table at Anne’s feet. Soon
Lumberlegs discovered a way of opening the door and he would hide
under the table, lying at Tommy’s feet. As he was quiet, and Tommy
declared that he made “a fine feet bench,” he was allowed to remain.
Consequently Waddles was squeezed against the table’s claw legs and
presently left his old place and lay disconsolately upon the door-mat.
When Lumberlegs came, a gift from Miss Jule, he was regarded as Tommy’s
property; but when the novelty wore off, and Jack and Jill became
counter attractions, he turned wholly to Anne to supply his needs both
of food and affection, and became devotedly attached to her as big dogs
usually are to only one person; while Anne, though faithful to Waddles,
returned his devotion, for he was in many ways a noble dog.
Anne had insisted almost from her babyhood that one of her ancestors
must have been an Indian, so fond she was of wild ways and things, and
this liking did not decrease as she grew of an age to crave friends of
her own race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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