Now he is whining softly to himself. If you do not speak to him soon and reassure him that the trouble is not past mending he will lift up his voice and howl, just as his ancestors, the wolves, howled ages ago upon the desolate plains.
The great Ibsen in “The Pretenders” epitomizes this fidelity of the dog when he causes King Skule to say: “I must have some one by me who sinks his own will utterly in mine, who believes in me unflinchingly, who will cling close to me in good-hap and ill, who lives only to shed warmth and light over my life, and must die if I fall.” And Jatgeir replies, “Buy yourself a dog, My Lord.”
Many other great men have understood and appreciated this faithful creature. Pope said, “Histories are more full of the examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.” Josh Billings exclaims in his humorous way, “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” Tennyson in a simple but truthful couplet sings,
“Faithful and true will be found upon four short legs, Ten times for one upon two.”
It was Eugene Field who said that a little rough dog can awaken a joy that enters eternity.
The small boy who ties a can to the dog’s tail and then laughs as the frantic creature runs yelping down the street, or perhaps shies a stone at him, knows not that this same despised canine may drag him from a watery grave, or from a burning building on the morrow. A hundred to one the dog would remember neither the tin can nor the stone, if he saw the boy in peril.
Forgiveness is the dog’s long suit. So if to err is human and to forgive is divine, then the dog must have a spark of that great love in his brute heart that knows how to forgive.
Even more culpable than the boy with his thoughtless cruelty is the man with his deliberate cruelty, the brute who makes this faithful creature the butt for his ill will. There is a deal of truth in the statement of Roland Hill that every man’s dog or his horse knows whether he be a Christian or not.
Where in the annals of mere humans, is there a story as touching in its absolute fidelity as that of “Gray Friar’s Bobby?” Lest this wonderful true story may not be familiar to you I give it here very briefly, the account being taken from our Four Footed Friends: