"The shepherd's dog, the least removed from the natural type of the
dog, is of a middle size; his ears short and straight; the hair long,
principally on the tail, and of a dark colour; the tail is carried
horizontally or a little elevated. He is very indifferent to caresses.
possessed of much intelligence and activity to discharge the duties
for which he was designed. In one or other of its varieties it is
found in every part of France. Sometimes there is but a single breed,
in others there are several varieties. It lives and maintains its
proper characteristics, while other races often degenerate. Everywhere
it preserves its proper distinguishing type. It is the servant of man,
while other breeds vary with a thousand circumstances. It has one
appropriate mission, and that it discharges in the most admirable way:
there is evidently a kind and wise design in this."
This account of the French sheep-dog, or of the sheep-dog everywhere, is
as true as it is beautiful. One age succeeds to another, we pass from
one climate to another, and everything varies and changes, but the
shepherd's dog is what he ever was--the guardian of our flocks. There
are, however, two or more species of this dog; the one which Professor
Grognier has described, and which guards and guides the sheep in the
open and level country, where wolves seldom intrude; another crossed
with the mastiff, or little removed from that dog, used in the woody and
mountainous countries, their guard more than their guide. [4] In Great
Britain, where he has principally to guide and not to guard the flock,
he is comparatively a small dog. He is so in the northern and open parts
of the country, where activity is principally wanted; but, in the more
enclosed districts, and where strength is often needed to turn an
obstinate sheep, he is crossed with some larger dog, as the rough
terrier, or sometimes the pointer, or now and then the bull-dog: in
fact, almost any variety that has strength and stoutness may be
employed. Thus we obtain the larger sheep-dog and the drover's dog. The
sagacity, forbearance, and kindness of the sheep-dog are generally
retained, but from these crosses there is occasionally a degree of
ferocity from which the sheep often suffer.
In other countries, where the flock is exposed to the attack of the
wolf, the sheep-dog is larger than the British drover's dog, and not far
inferior in size to the mastiff. The strength and ferocity which qualify
him to combat with the wolf, would occasionally be injurious or fatal to
those who somewhat obstinately opposed his direction; therefore, in
Denmark and in Spain, the dog is rarely employed to drive the flock. It
is the office of the shepherd, to know every individual under his
charge, to, as in olden times, "call them all by their names," and have
always some docile and tamed wether who will take the lead, almost as
subservient to his voice as is the dog himself, and whom the flock will
immediately follow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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