Collie -- Juvenile fiction; Dogs -- Juvenile fiction; Short stories
In a flash the great dog was alert and tense; his tulip ears up, his
whole body at attention, the look of eagles in his eyes as he scanned
the ringside for a glimpse of his friend, Wolf.
Judge Cooper took one long look at him. Then, without so much as laying
a hand on the magnificently-showing Treve, he awarded him the blue
ribbon in his class.
I had sense enough to take the dog into one corner and to keep him
there, quieting and steadying him until the Winners’ Class was called.
As I led him into the ring, then, to compete with the other classes’
blue ribboners, Robert called once more to the absent Wolf. Again the
trick served. The collie moved and stood as if galvanised into sparkling
life.
Cooper handed me the Winners’ rosette; the rosette whose acquisition
made Treve a Champion of Record!
It was only about a year ago. In that little handful of time, the judge
who made him a champion—the new-made champion himself—the dog whose name
roused him from his apathy in the ring—all three are dead. I don’t think
a white sportsman like Cooper would mind my linking his name with two
such supreme collies, in this word of necrology. Cooper—Treve—_Wolf!_
(There’s lots of room in this old earth of ours for the digging of
graves, isn’t there?)
Home we came with our champion—Champion Sunnybank Sigurd—who displayed
so little championship dignity that, an hour after our return to the
Place, he lifted my brand new Panama hat daintily from the hall-table,
carried it forth from the house with a loving tenderness; laid it to
rest in a patch of lakeside mud; and then rolled on it.
I was too elated over our triumph to scold him for the costly sacrilege.
I am glad now that I didn’t. For a scolding or a single harsh word ever
reduced him to utter heartbreak.
And so for a while, at the Place, our golden champion continued to revel
in the gay zest of life.
He was the livest dog I have known. Wolf alone was his chum among all
the Sunnybank collies. Wolf alone, with his mighty heart and vast wisdom
and his elfin sense of fun and his love for frolic. Wolf and Treve used
to play a complicated game whose chief move consisted of a sweeping
breakneck gallop, for perhaps a half-mile, to the accompaniment of a
fanfare of barking. Across the green lawns they would flash, like
red-gold meteors; and at a pace none of their fleet-footed brethren
could maintain.
One morning they started as usual on this whirlwind dash. But at the end
of the first few yards, Treve swayed in his flying stride, faltered to a
stop and came slowly back to me. He thrust his muzzle into my cupped
hand—for the first time in his undemonstrative life—then stood wearily
beside me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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