XVI
Sundry Dogs

They are all dead. They die so very soon,
  These faithful folk, these tireless cheery friends.
They do their duty, morning, eve and noon,
  Then all too suddenly their short life ends.
Yet live they still in thought; and in my mind
  I still can hear them baying round the boar;
Or as we upward round the great spurs wind,
  I wave them out to drive the sheep once more.

Before the Institution, in New Zealand, of collie trials, when the voice was used, instead of the whistle, there was probably no job more trying to the temper than "working dogs." With an erring collie quite out of reach, the most good-natured man was apt, now and then, to lose his temper, and to shout. But as the mere fact of shouting tends to increase wrath, especially if the voice has to be strained, It was not very unusual for self-control to be quite lost, with results amusing enough to the onlooker.

One morning, on coming unnoticed round a corner on a hillside road, I saw a well-educated and usually mild neighbour, wildly shouting and waving his arms, his eye fixed on his dog far away up above, So looking, page break

Plate XVI
General Skobeleff and a Friend

Plate XVI
A Captured Kingfisher Shows Fight

page 115he ran bang into a gate-post. Full loaded with wrath as he already was, this proved the last straw; he stood off and cursed that post for a good whole minute. Then he saw me.

Seated on the veranda of our house, a good Quaker lady, newly from England, was, at first, a little taken aback by what on that first day she saw and heard. In full sight on the high bank across our little river stood another neighbour—a respectable Scot, working a young dog on the hill beyond. At a critical moment in his operations, this dog was told to race ahead and stop a breakaway of sheep. She was young and raw, and hesitated, while Sandy yelled to tear his throat. The puzzled collie misunderstood, and the sheep got away. Dancing mad with rage, the shepherd threw down his hat and stamped on it; then, having knelt solemnly down, he, at the top of his voice, tearfully besought the Almighty, immediately, and with the most ghastly torment, to put an end to the life of that sanguinary little bitch. My good mother, taken on her humorous side, was too convulsed with laughter to be horrified.

But with public competitions self-restraint became necessary, even if sometimes nearly impossible. Old McAlister, for instance, would have a dog up the hill, and work it up to a critical point. Then higher and higher page 116would rise his Hieland voice, till with a bursting squeak out would come the inevitable oath, for which the whole watching crowd had been waiting, and poor Mac would have to retire disqualified and crestfallen amid the delighted laughter of his friends.

New Zealand sheep dogs are of all sizes, shapes, colours, and breeds, being selected purely for brains and stamina, and not at all for looks. They vary as much in personal character as they do in appearance. Take my own team, for instance. When clearing a hillside, and seeing a straggler to be fetched in, I would first call on Mattie, a pure-bred Scotch collie of the finest manners and appearance, but past her first youth. Up she would discreetly trot, and placing herself well above, would begin to remonstrate politely, and even appealingly. But it was an old ewe she had to deal with, with a young lamb and no intention of moving. Then it was the turn of Jake (Plate XXV, bottom left), of whom more hereafter, and he goes up like a flash and does all he can, but even he, taught to avoid all brutality, cannot shift her. Standing by me is old Joe, tall, black and tan, more of a cattle drover than a sheep dog, and always to be depended on for noise. No sooner do I just whisper his name than he starts barking, and barks page 117himself up the range at such a pace that the ewe is off before he reaches her. A most friendly and willing old chap was Joe, atoning with voice and power for what he lacked in brains. A sportsman, too, so fond of a gun that he barked every time I used my telescope, and before we lit the fuse for a log-splitting blast, had always to be held, lest he should risk his life, running along the trunk in eager anticipation of the glorious bang. But I have seen him put quite out of countenance. 1 shall never forget his look of amazed discomfiture, when he had picked himself up, after an old ram, taking him entirely unawares, had suddenly butted him, all any way, clean through a wire fence at the sheep yards.

One specialised canine rôle is that of the "leading dog," On a very narrow track, winding along steep and broken hillsides, you would meet him, pacing, slow and sedate, with the foremost of a couple of thousand sheep closely following, and he, most obviously, enjoying his high responsibility. A whistle from the drover, far away and quite out of sight, and he turns, head down, on the sheep, and the whole march is stopped. Another whistle and he resumes his steady pacing, the sheep following.

But returning to my own dogs; what joy, when six days I had laboured and done all page 118my work, to take the whole pack a long day's ramble on the seventh; to force my way through a many year's growth of brakefern, the line of dogs sneezing in a cloud of pollen behind me; to wade up a creek, startling a big shag, who, vomiting live eels, would come back riverward over one's head; to be momentarily deluded by a grey duck with a hopelessly broken wing, who is presently seen high up in perfect flight; to wait, still and silent, till small heads appear one by one on the surface of the shallow pool—the ducklings who had, till then, been sitting like so many pebbles, safe under water, on the bottom. What delight, I say, to wander for miles in the trackless bush, keen for a shot at the big pigeon, or a rush after pig; to spend the day all chums together, Maori, who could scent and find the most distant pig; old Charlie, who would hold anything; Jake, who would sometimes spot a high-up sitting pigeon, and all the rest, all set on the same job, and all the lot of us understanding, helping, and appreciating each other; and, as the sun got low, to return, filthy and glorious, with a load of good pork, or a few brace of the very edible pearl grey birds.

Oh, you who keep wretched dogs in a town, in a seventh-storey flat, perhaps, how little do you understand what their life should be, and page break

Plate XVII
Mr. Blakeney
The Photo handed to the Police

Plate XVII
Wild Pork for Lloyd

page 119the joy of their really co-operative companionship. And those of you, so urbanised and intellectualised as to affect to despise, even in your youth, all instincts inherited from savagery, what a lot of joy you miss! I am no longer young, and I do not regret that the lust of killing anything higher in nature than fish has departed from me, but the memory of those days fills me with delight even yet.

How clearly I remember one evening when some Maoris came down the range from the bush, their saddles loaded with the meat of a wild heifer they had killed, slices of which roasted on sticks at their camp fire were, as I recollect it, the finest beef I have ever tasted. They were full of the exploits of their young dog, who had made straight for the beast's nose, and held on, Such a dog! Big, yellow, heavy and low-set, with a foot-wide jowl, a stiffly up-curled trumpet of a tail, and a growl to frighten the life out of you, Money would not buy him then, but next year the Maoris came again, with sickles and flails, cutting and thrashing our grass for seed. Charlie had now to work so hard for them, pig-hunting, that being heavy, he got footsore. So, on leaving, they sold me, for a pound, the right of getting him from their deserted camp, from which he did not seem inclined to stir; by no means a page 120fancy job, but much too good a chance to miss, Hearing the camp, I walked like Agag, delicately, Charlie's growls getting deeper and more bloodcurdling with every step I took. Then, as usual, when I want to make friends, I sat down on the ground close by, and talked; but Charlie's part of the conversation was deplorably bad, and I was so frightened by it, that it was a long time before I found pluck enough to get hold of him and lead him home. Unfortunately, the station was not at all to his liking; he was a camp dog, and said so, and he despised civilisation, and showed that, also, very clearly, He also despised all the other dogs and chawed some of them up. In fact, at the homestead he was a bad-mannered, rotten-tempered, supercilious, and disgruntled nuisance. But camp, camp in the bush, that was quite another pair of shoes. There, he was his better self, just one broad, yellow, smiling wriggle of delight, with never a growl about him; there, after being happily companionable with everyone all day, he would curl up for the night outside the tent wall, snuggling down as near me as ever he could get.

A good pig dog will keep a boar at bay until his boss comes up, and then darting in alongside the beast from behind, will hold him by an ear, or even, the back of the neck, page 121keeping himself safe from the ripping upstroke of the tusks, while the man finishes the business. Old Charlie's fault was that he was too plucky. He would not wait, but would always go in on his own, even if quite alone. In the end he got himself killed that way.

Another of the pack was an Australian kangaroo dog, like a greyhound in shape, only very much bigger and more powerful, with shorter and stronger jaws. Deep tan was old Sin, with a black face. His father had been even bigger, a noted wild dog catcher, and was reported to have once seized a trembling stranger by the coat sleeve, to have led him up to his master's door, and to have held him there till approved. I was photographing one day, and my horse having broken away, I had to carry home the camera for a mile or so across the open grass country of a neighbour's run, where, as the cattle never saw anyone on foot, you had to be careful. A small herd of inquisitive beasts soon appeared, and came circling round us at a trot, nearer and nearer. When they were quite close I handed over the matter to Sin, who leapt at the job. A few seconds later, silhouetted on the skyline, I saw the last cow going her best, her tail absurdly straight out behind by reason of the great dog hanging back on it with all his weight.

A dear old stupid with no tact. Into the circle, round the wharé fire at night, would come Scotch Mattie, entering with that easy dignity and politeness which always assured her a welcome. But Sin's approach was different; he would first bang open the door, then he would hesitate and slowly shove his great black jowl round the door edge to reconnoitre, actually asking for the boot, which often came flying. With pigs he was a fool, too. He came out of one mêlée with a four-or-five-inch rip through his cheek. This had to be sewn up, and there was no one but me to do it. I got a small packing needle and, putting a good point on it, stood up the old boy on the veranda, against the house wall, and quakingly tackled the job. He actually let me use all my force to get the needle several times through his very tough hide, without offering to move an inch, only now and then giving a very small whine. Later on another boar finished him; he came round to me out of the straggle in a dense thicket, and died at my feet.

In the earliest days, before we had a wharé, when we lived in a tent piled with all our belongings, we were wakened one night by something between a hurricane and an earthquake. Crockery was breaking, pots and pans clashing, and general pandemonium raging.

Little Sorrow, the fox-terrier, on the prowl for food, had been caught by her nose in a rat-trap, and was running amok with it, till we got it off her. She was not much good, except to chase wekas, the running bush hens, though her strategy with pigs was often as effective as it was indelicate. I once saw a very large boar standing at bay in the open with most of the bigger dogs round him, and a terrible row going on. When Sorrow appeared, he seemed to find it best to sit down and repel attacks by pivoting on the rear.

Repentance was a collie pup. I was on our draught mare, when accidentally she put her heavy foot down on the little animal, and kept it there for some seconds. There was only a little rim of gelatinous pup left outside the edge of the great hoof—it was as if she had trod on a small half-filled rubber bottle—but into this rim must have run all his vitals. I nursed the whining remains all that night, but the pup was on his legs again next day. He was, however, later on, shot by an over-rash brother, also in a pig tussle,

Jake was a smooth-haired sheep dog, black turned up with white and lemon, with a fine frank smile, and a politely waving tail. He had character, and he was full of self-respect. Only once had I to beat him, and that but lightly, but had I not known his page 124spirit and been careful, I should have been badly bitten. As it was, he did break the skin of the hand that held his fore paw, though, so grasped, a dog cannot or will not ever really bite. After that little disagreement, however, we always got along famously together. He was fast and keen on his work, and never so happy as when speeding along, half a mile up the range, to head and bring back scattering sheep, directed from afar by a whistle and a wave of the hand. Twice I have seen him frightened. We were fencing at the back of the run, had knocked off for lunch, and were seated on the low bed places each side of the tent, with the billy on the ground between us, when to the tent door came Jake, with his engaging smile, and the most ingratiating wave of his tail, and he was, of course, asked in, too. Carefully picking his way, he came along between us and had turned to sit down at the back of the tent, when, with a sudden blood-curdling yell, and one great bound, he was back over everything, outside and away, turning up at the five-mile-distant homestead very shortly afterwards. He had put his tail in an unseen pannikin of scalding tea, and of course had not the slightest idea what had got him.

His second fright was different and more interesting. Travelling in the far end of the page 125district, at a foot's pace, Jake, who was on my left, saw the head of a sheep which was coming up to the road from below on my right. Then, as the sheep's neck showed longer, and abnormally longer still, Jake stared, first with startled surprise, and then in abject terror. With every hair on end, a low grunt replacing his usual clear staccato bark, he miserably crept along, his body bowed away from the inexplicable horror. He was a long time getting over it, and for miles he was grunting and looking back over his shoulder. The sheep he saw was in fact no sheep, but a white alpaca. It was said that the settler who was experimenting with these beasts got very little wool, and, in shearing that little off, was bitten, kicked, and spat on, the last with the best of aims and copiously.

Very human was Jake. I once saw him in the agonies of indecision. One morning, keen on his job, he started off with me for a day's mustering. But there was at the station a counter attraction, and when, on a hillside cutting, half a mile away, we came in full view of the homestead, his inability to make up his mind was quite painful to see. He raced back and he raced forth, and then, sitting down in the middle of the road, he raised his nose high in the air and howled to break your heart.