One of the best stories about the intelligence of dogs which has been
told for some time was repeated a few days ago by an officer of the
Pennsylvania Railroad Company. He said that one of the men in the
passenger department had a dog that could tell the time of day. The
owner of the dog had a fine clock in his office, and he got into the
habit of making the dog tap with his paw at each stroke of the clock.
After a while the dog did so without being told, and as the clock gave a
little cluck just before striking, the dog would get into position,
prick up his ears, and tap out the time. If the clock had struck one and
a little while afterward his owner imitated the preliminary cluck of the
clock, the dog would give two taps with his paw, and so on for any hour.
He knew just how the hours ran and how many taps to give for each one.
We must of course believe a clergyman’s story of a dog, the Rev. C. J.
Adams, in The Dog Fancier:
“Not ‘Tige,’ concerning whom I have told a number of stories in this
department. Tiger is another dog, and a fine fellow he is. His hair is
short, and he is as black as night. I have met him but once, and that
was at a clericus at the house of his master—the Rev. Peter Claude
Creveling, at Cornwall, N. Y. He is probably four feet and a half long
as to his body. He stands nearly as high as an ordinary table. He has a
fine head—wonderfully large brain chambers. His eyes are extremely
intelligent and expressive. His master loves him with a great,
boisterous love characteristic of the man—who will be a great,
attractive, lovable boy when he is eighty. I greet him, and hope that he
may abide in the flesh till he is one hundred and eighty. But I took up
my pen to write about the dog—not the master. The dog and the master are
well mated. Tiger is the dog for the master, and Mr. Creveling is the
master for the dog. We hardly ever meet but before we are through
shaking hands Mr. Creveling begins telling me something about Tiger.
This occurred, as usual, at a hotel where I was entertaining the clergy
a month or so ago. The story was wonderful, and is vouched for by
reliable witnesses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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