Dogtown: Being Some Chapters from the Annals of the Waddles Family Set Down in the Language of HousepeopleWright, Mabel Osgood
General
Dogtown: Being Some Chapters from the Annals of the Waddles Family Set Down in the Language of Housepeople
Wright, Mabel Osgood
Dogs -- Juvenile fiction
So in time it had come to be that Waddles was the acknowledged head of
Dogtown and its people, these same being three times the number that
had been the escort of Miss Prue and Augusta Victoria. For when people
heard of the doings of the dogs at Happy Hall, and saw the beautiful
setters, foxhounds, and field spaniels that Miss Jule raised in the
Hilltop Kennels at the horse farm, every one wanted a dog of his or her
own; and though Lily remained the only real bulldog in the community,
there were several clever bull terriers, and Miss Letty brought back
from her schooling abroad a wonderful black poodle, who understood
three languages.
[Illustration: _The Mayor of Dogtown._]
Miss Jule’s dogs did not quite belong to Dogtown as citizens, because,
being kennel dogs, they were not free to come and go and to express
their opinions like the others. They were as boarding-school
children, having fixed times for exercise and play, in comparison to
those who, after school, run free.
There are some children who, though they may have good dispositions,
can never be happy when cooped up and restrained. Tommy-Anne had
been one of these, and so when, a year before, she had seen Cadence
the beagle sitting looking mournfully through the slat door of her
kennel, where she had been shut by her trainer for being heedless and
unmanageable and not obeying his directions, her heart smote her and
she felt so intimate a kinship with the little animal with the hopeless
eyes, that she went to Miss Jule to ask the price of Cadence and if she
might pay for her by instalments.
Miss Jule loved animals dearly, was tender-hearted, and had several pet
dogs that were almost human; but the kennel dogs were raised for sale,
and must be taught the various trades that, together with their pure
breeding, made them valuable and able to earn their living.
No cruelty was allowed in the training-and-breaking-to-hunt process,
but they simply must learn. Martin, Baldy’s brother, who not only broke
colts under Miss Jule’s supervision, but trained both fox and beagle
hounds, had said of gentle Cadence: “She’s no mortal use for hunting
rabbits, she won’t mind if you chide her, unless your very eyes are
upon her, she bolts at sight of a gun, won’t heel or gather with the
others. We don’t need her for breeding, and I think she’d be better out
of the way.”
While Miss Jule was thinking over the matter, Anne had hurried home
and counted the contents of her money box replete with the results of
Christmas, a birthday, copying manuscript for her father, and various
dealings in rags, bottles, and old iron. She had been saving seriously
to buy a camera holding glass plates that she could develop herself,
and so be able to take pictures of her dear woods and flowers, the
dogs, and, best of all, of her father and mother as they walked out in
the garden together in their everyday clothes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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