The red book of animal stories/Collies, or Sheep Dogs
COLLIES, OR SHEEP DOGS
Shepherds’ dogs, when in regular work, are serious animals, and far too busy in their daily life to have time or taste for play. They do not make friends very easily, because they and their masters are accustomed to live alone on the wild hills or great moors, and the sight of other men is strange to them. But they are as useful and necessary to the shepherds, their masters, as any other race of dogs trained to business habits; indeed, the work of keeping a flock together would be quite impossible without them.
The shepherd’s dog (or ‘collie’ as he is called in Scotland) is a beautifully shaped animal, either bright yellow, or black and white, with a curly tail. He is a very quick runner, and a splendid jumper, as he has need to be, when his duty is to follow the sheep into all sorts of rough places, where no man could ever keep his footing. He is regularly sent to school before going out to service, and carefully taught his work, which, in general, he learns very easily; and besides the training he gets in this way, his life soon teaches him to bear hunger and thirst and to do without much food, which is often, in severe winters, very hard to get in distant spots.
As for weeks, and even months, the dog is frequently the shepherd’s only companion, the two seem almost to understand the thoughts that are passing through each other’s minds without need of speech. One bitter winter’s day, about a hundred years ago, a young man was herding his father’s sheep on a Cumberland moor, when he fell and broke his leg. Dusk was coming on, the road was lonely, and home was three miles away. To spend the night on the bare heath was certain death; how to get help he knew not. Suddenly an idea came to him: he tied one of his thick gloves round the dog’s neck and told him to go home. The dog bounded off,
THE FAITHFUL MESSENGER
and was soon heard scratching at the farmhouse door.
At the sight of the glove the farmer at once understood
that some accident had happened, and wrapping himself
in his plaid, called to his men and prepared to set out.
The dog ran first, and after stopping many times to make
sure he was not going too fast for the others, led them to
where the young man was lying, faint with pain and half dead with cold. A few hours more and it would have been too late to save him.
Sirrah, the favourite collie of Hogg, the ‘Ettrick Shepherd,’ was, like many people who live in lonely places, rude and unsociable. If a friend patted him, he growled; if anyone admired him, he simply walked away. But, says his master, in spite of these manners, ‘he was the best dog I ever saw.’ Very little is known of his early history, but when he is first heard of he belonged to a boy down on the border, and was sold by him to a drover for three shillings. The drover brought him northwards, and gave him very little food on the way, so that when Hogg first met him he was very thin, and looking as cross as hungry people often do. At this time he was nearly a year old, with a very dark coat. Partly out of pity, and partly because he thought that the dog looked as if something might be made of him, Hogg offered the man a guinea, which was eagerly accepted, and took his new bargain home. The next day the Ettrick Shepherd began to teach Sirrah his duties, which were evidently quite new to him; but it was wonderful what pains he took to learn, and how grateful he was to his new master. ‘He would try every way deliberately till he found out what I wanted him to do, and when once I made him understand a direction, he never forgot or mistook it again.’ And besides his care in following out directions, he was wonderfully clever at inventing ways of overcoming obstacles or getting out of difficulties.
One dark night, about seven hundred lambs, which had just been taken away from their mothers, formed themselves into three divisions and rushed away to try to find their way home again. Hogg, and a boy who was with him, did all they could to stop them, but it was no use, for the darkness was so dense you could not see the length of your hand. ‘Sirrah!’ cried the poor man in despair, ‘they’re awa’;’ and so they were, beyond the power of his catching. But Sirrah was cleverer than his master in the matter of catching sheep, and off he started, while Hogg and his helper passed the night in seeking for traces of the lambs, which could not be found, go where they would. At last, when the sun rose, they gave up the chase and returned to the farmer who owned the flock, to tell him of the loss of his sheep, a thing which bad never occurred to Hogg before, all the years of his life as a shepherd, neither had he ever heard of it happening to anyone else. On their way back from this unpleasant errand they had to pass a deep hollow or ‘clench,’ as it is called in Scotland, and there, safe at the bottom, were the whole flock of lambs, with Sirrah standing over them. Hogg could not believe his eyes, and at first thought it must be only one of the divisions of the lambs—though even for that he was grateful enough; but when he came to count them there was not one missing. How Sirrah had managed to collect them nobody knew, and of course nobody ever did know!
When Sirrah died, he left a son called Hector, to take up his duties. Hector, though not nearly so clever as his father, was a more lively companion; full of whims and freaks, but much attached to his master.
One day in August, Hogg was sent by his master to a farm at the head of the river Ettrick, to bring back some black-faced lambs, intended for next morning’s market. Hogg set out, accompanied, of course, by Hector. For some reason or other the lambs were not brought down from the hills till quite late, and the shepherd did not feel at all comfortable at the thought that he would have to drive them the greater part of the way in utter darkness. What was worse, he knew that the lambs, which had only just been parted from their mothers, would be very unruly. However, there was no help for it, the start must be made, and though everything turned out exactly as he had imagined, with the aid of Hector all the lambs were at last safely housed in the fold, and both man and dog were nearly worn out.
As soon as the door of the fold was shut, Hogg went in to his own supper, and then put down Hector’s; but the dog was nowhere to be seen. Hogg whistled and called for some time, but to no purpose, and finally he gave it up and went to bed, wondering how in the world he was to drive his lambs to market without the help of his collie.
His first question when he woke was whether Hector had come home; but no one had seen or heard anything of him. What was to be done? Each person suggested something different, till it was decided that the shepherd’s father should feed the lambs and get them ready for their walk (shepherds take a great deal of pride in having a smart flock), while Hogg rode as fast as he could back to the farm to ask if Hector had returned there. So father and son left the house together, to bring the lambs out of the fold, and when they reached the door there was poor Hector sitting before it, never taking his eyes off his charges, for fear lest they should run away! There he had sat all the night long in the pouring rain, hungry and tired, a martyr to what he considered his duty, though a wiser dog would have known that, once they were in the fold, he need not trouble about the lambs any further.
The Hoggs had a cat which Hector hated with a deadly hatred, though he was too good-natured to hurt her, however provoking she might be. His way of revenging himself for puss’s impertinence towards him was to ‘point’ her, as if she was a bird, whenever they were in the room together. If annoyed at being watched in this manner, the cat got up and sat in another place, Hector was sure to follow her and begin again; and this went on till he had to go to his work or else fell asleep.
Hector had a very small appetite, and often the only way to make him eat was to bring in the cat and set her to the plate. Then he got furious at her attempting to take what belonged to him; his eyes glared, and his tail stood up straight with anger. When her nose touched the food he could bear it no longer, and began to lap madly, though he never failed to keep to his own side of the dish, and let her pick up anything she could get.
Another of Hector’s tricks, and one of which he could never be cured, was to tear round the room like a wild thing, a few seconds before old Hogg finished his daily family prayer; and this was all the more strange as the old man prayed out of his own head, and the length of the prayer varied. It never seems to have occurred to any of the family to shut the dog up, and they all puzzled in vain over the reason for his conduct, when suddenly the true explanation darted into the head of the shepherd himself. ‘Hector is all day long pointing the cat; now, when he sees us kneeling with our heads on our hands, exactly as he does, he takes for granted that we are pointing her too, and the moment that he can tell from our father’s voice that the prayer is coming to an end, he springs to his feet, saying to himself: “It is no good for them to try, I am the first in the field.”’
Like many Scotch dogs, Hector was fond of going to church, when his friends would have preferred him to remain at home, and he also enjoyed taking part in the music. The church at Ettrick, where the Hoggs lived, was small, and the singing very bad, which vexed the shepherd, who determined to try to improve it. This he would very likely have managed to do if it had not been for Hector, who, however carefully he had been shut up at home, always contrived to escape, and would he seen stalking up the aisle to the terror of his master, who knew what he had to expect. The moment the first notes sounded, in struck Hector; higher and higher rose the man’s voice, louder and louder became the dog’s, while the rest of the congregation hid their faces in their plaids, and laughed till they nearly fell off their seats. For some time Hogg stuck to it from sheer obstinacy, but at length Hector proved too much for him, and he gave up the singing to some one who owned a less musical dog!
Though, as we have seen, Hector was not nearly as intelligent as his father Sirrah, about performing his duties, he would hold tight to what he had been bidden to do, with the stupid obedience of Casabianca. Nothing would turn his attention from his work, or make him lose temper; but he could never learn all sorts of little dodges by which Sirrah managed the sheep, so gave himself twice the trouble that he need have done.
Still, though he was not a practical dog, Hector was very wide awake in many ways, and at any mention of a cat, sheep, or himself, he would cock his ears, and sit bolt upright with the deepest interest. One evening Hogg told his mother he was going over to one of the hills on St. Mary’s Loch, to spend a fortnight with a friend, but that he would not take Hector, as he would either disturb them with his singing, or quarrel with the other dogs.
Next morning the river had risen high and made so much extra work, that Hogg was prevented from setting out as soon as he had intended.
When he called Hector to tie him up, the dog was nowhere to be seen.
‘Confound that beast!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll wager that he has understood what we were saying last night, and has gone to Bowerhope.’
And so he had, though the river Yarrow, which he had to cross, had swollen into such a torrent that it seemed impossible for any dog to swim it. But there he was when Hogg arrived, sitting like a drowned hen at the end of the house, awaiting his master’s arrival with impatience.