The dog is the only animal that is capable of disinterested affection. He is the only one that regards the human being as his companion, and follows him as his friend; the only one that seems to possess a natural desire to be useful to him, or from a spontaneous impulse attaches himself to man. We take the bridle from the mouth of the horse, and turn him free into the pasture, and he testifies his joy in his partially recovered liberty. We exact from the dog the service that is required of him, and he still follows us. He solicits to be continued as our companion and our friend. Many an expressive action tells us how much he is pleased and thankful. He shares in our abundance, and he is content with the scantiest and most humble fare. He loves us while living, and has been known to pine away on the grave of his master.
As an animal of draught the dog is highly useful in some countries. What would become of the inhabitants of the northern regions, if the dog were not harnessed to the sledge, and the Laplander, and the Greenlander, and the Kamtchatkan drawn, and not unfrequently at the rate of nearly a hundred miles a day, over the snowy wastes? In Newfoundland, the timber, one of the most important articles of commerce, is drawn to the water-side by the docile but ill-used dog: and we need only to cross the British Channel in order to see how useful, and, generally speaking, how happy, a beast of draught the dog can be.
Though, in our country, and to its great disgrace, this employment of the dog has been accompanied by such wanton and shameful cruelty, that the Legislature—somewhat hastily confounding the abuse of a thing with its legitimate purpose—forbade the appearance of the dog-cart in the metropolitan districts, and were inclined to extend this prohibition through the whole kingdom, it is much to be desired that a kindlier and better feeling may gradually prevail, and that this animal, humanely treated, may return to the discharge of the services of which nature has rendered him capable, and which prove the greatest source of happiness to him while discharging them to the best of his power.
In another and very important particular, as the preserver of human life, the history of the dog will be most interesting. The writer of this work has seen a Newfoundland dog who, on five distinct occasions, preserved the life of a human being; and it is said of the noble quadruped whose remains constitute one of the most interesting specimens in the museum of Berne, that forty persons were rescued by him from impending destruction.
When this friend and servant of man dies, he does not or may not cease to be useful; for in many countries, and to a far greater extent than is generally imagined, his skin is useful for gloves, or leggings, or mats, or hammercloths; and, while even the Romans occasionally fattened him for the table, and esteemed his flesh a dainty, many thousands of people in Asia, Africa, and America, now breed him expressly for food.
If the publication of the present work should throw some additional light on the good qualities of this noble animal; if it should enable us to derive more advantage from the services that he can render—to train him more expeditiously and fully for the discharge of those services—to protect him from the abuses to which he is exposed, and to mitigate or remove some of the diseases which his connexion with man has entailed upon him; if any of these purposes be accomplished, we shall derive considerable "useful knowledge" as well as pleasure from the perusal of the present volume.
