Under the influence of this absolute submission[A] to his master, rather than from any mere superficial cleverness, such as may be readily found in mere trick-performing dogs, Wallace could be taught a variety of acquirements, and was in the end so accomplished a dog that I fear I cannot call to mind a tithe of his attainments. I believe he could sit up in any attitude or assumption of character, or throw down his body in any required posture, and remain so for a given time. He could mimic swimming at the word of command. He could constitute himself a pony for little children—indeed he was not less than some Shetland ponies—and he would carry them decorously round the room or the garden on his back. He could—and this was probably the hardest task of all—at his master’s bidding, lie down in a meadow where a herd of cattle fed, and permit the whole of the oxen to gather lowing round him, and even to lick him with their rough tongues, without his stirring or offering the smallest resistance.
Wallace was somewhat up in years before Dick came on the scene. He also arrived at the farm-house a puppy, but it was not at first intended that he should remain there. The master of the house had kindly procured Dick with the intention of giving him to a friend when he himself became so enamoured of the little dog’s briskness and pluck, and at the same time so persuaded that these qualities would be wasted in the quiet life of the woman for whom Dick had been originally got, that he substituted another and more suitable dog, and kept the little man for his own portion.
As I have been assured, there never was a blyther, bolder, more irrepressible spirit than that which lodged in the body of the small terrier. Like his friend Wallace, he needed to be tamed, and to the last he could not stand teasing for any length of time without a strong inclination to show his fine white teeth in a way which was not play. The fact was, that on these occasions he got into a white heat of rage, in which he was in danger of ceasing to be master of his actions.
Once, when Dick was a young dog, under some provocation he flew at and slightly bit his mistress, who had no resource but to show him the iniquity of the deed in a manner which, I believe, is effectual when it is possible to practise it. According to strict injunctions as to the conduct required in the circumstances, and in the stern necessity of preventing a repetition of the offence, which might have cost the life of the offender, she caught Dick by the refractory cuff of his neck, carried him to the door of a room into which she could throw him when the time came, and while holding him in the air—which is the great secret of the effectiveness of the punishment, since the culprit feels himself, during the infliction, absolutely powerless in the grasp of the dispenser of justice—cuffed him soundly, and then flung him from her into the open door at hand, closing it quickly after him, and so preventing any possibility of a hostile attack from the dog while still writhing and struggling under his penalty. The result was, that the tender-hearted young mistress withdrew sick from giving the painful lesson she had been imperatively called on to teach. But, as in the case of Wallace, and as in that of the mastiff which Emily Brontë cowed by one box in the ear, the lesson had been learned thoroughly; Dick never again, unless in such an instance of wilful protracted teasing as I have referred to, took to biting his friends.