The honour accorded to the dog is no new thing. It has for centuries rewarded his valour and fidelity. Responsibilities, duties, compensations--these have always been his portion. Sirius shines in the heavens, and Cerberus guards in hell. The dog, Katmir, who watched over the Seven Sleepers for three hundred and nine years, gained Paradise for his pains, as well he might. Even the ill-fated hounds of Actæon, condemned to kill their more ill-fated master, are in some sort immortal, inasmuch as we may know, if we choose, the names of every one of them. Through the long pages of legend and romance the figure of the dog is clearly outlined; and when history begins with man’s struggle for existence, the dog may be found his ally and confederate. It was a strange fatality which impelled this animal to abandon communal life and the companionship of his kind for the restraints, the safety, the infinite weariness of domesticity. It was an amazing tractableness which caused him to accept a set of principles foreign to his nature--the integrity of work, the honourableness of servitude, the artificial values of civilization. As a consequence of this extraordinary change of base, we have grown accustomed to judge the dog by human standards. In fact, there are no other standards which apply to him. The good dog, like the good man, is the dog which has duties to perform, and which performs them faithfully. The bad dog, like the bad man, is the dog which is idle, ill-tempered and over-indulged by women. Women are responsible for most of the dog-failures, as well as for many of the man-failures of the world. So long as they content themselves with toy beasts, this does not much matter; but a real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being. What if the shepherd dog fares hardly, and if exposure stiffens his limbs! He has at least lived, and played his part in life. Nothing more beautiful or more poignant has ever been written about any animal than James Hogg’s description of his old collie which could no longer gather in the sheep, and with which he was compelled to part, because--poor Ettrick shepherd--he could not afford to pay the tax on two dogs. The decrepit beast refused to be separated from the flocks which had been his care and pride. Day after day he hobbled along, watching the new collie bustling about his work, and--too wise to interfere--looking with reproachful eyes at the master who had so reluctantly discarded him.