Chapter XVI: The Dog (2)

I myself know a large dog in Germany which used to kill snakes by dexterously tossing them in the air a great number of times, too quickly to admit of the snake biting. When the snake was thus quite confused, the dog would tear it in pieces. This dog can never have been poisoned by the bite of a snake; but he seems to have had an instinctive idea that the snake might be more harmful in its bite than other animals; for while he was bold in fighting with dogs, and did not then object to receiving his fair share of laceration, he was extremely careful never to begin to tear a snake till he had thoroughly bewildered it by tossing it as described.

The reasoning displayed by dogs may not always be of a high order, but little incidents, from being of constant occurrence among all dogs, are the more important as showing the reasoning faculty to be general to these animals. I shall therefore give a few cases to show the kind of reasoning that is of constant occurrence.

Mr. Stone writes to me from Norbury Park concerning two of his dogs, one large and the other small. Both being in a room at the same time,

one of them, the larger, had a bone, and when he had
left it the smaller dog went to take it, the larger
one growled, and the other retired to a corner.
Shortly afterwards the larger dog went out, but the
other did not appear to notice this, and at any rate
did not move. A few minutes later the large dog was
heard to bark out of doors; the little dog then,
without a moment's hesitation, went straight to the
bone and took it. It thus appears quite evident that
she reasoned--'That dog is barking out of doors,
therefore he is not in this room, therefore it is safe
for me to take the bone.' The action was so rapid as
to be clearly a consequence of the other dog's
barking.

Again, Mr. John Le Conte, writing from the University of California, tells me of a dog which used to hunt rabbits in an extensive pasture-ground where there was a hollow tree, which frequently served as a place of refuge for the rabbits when they were pressed:--

On one occasion a rabbit was 'started,' and all of the
dogs, with the exception of 'Bonus,' dashed off in
full pursuit. We were astonished to observe that the
sedate 'Bonus,' foregoing the intense excitement of
the chase, deliberately trotted by a short cut to a
hollow oak trunk, and crouching at its base calmly
awaited the advent of the fleeing rabbit. And he was
not disappointed (they frequently escaped without
being reduced to this extremity), for the pursuing
dogs pressed the rabbit so hard that, after making a
long detour, it made for the place of refuge. As it
was about entering the hollow trunk, the crouching
'Bonus' captured the astonished rodent.

Similarly, Dr. Andrew Wilson, F.R.S.E., writes me as follows:--

There is a shrubbery near the house, about 200 or 300
yards long, and running in the shape of a horseshoe. A
small terrier used to start a rabbit nearly every
morning, at the end of the shrubbery next the house,
and hunt him through the whole length of it to the
other end, where the rabbit escaped into an old drain.
The dog then appears to have come to the conclusion
that the chord of a circle is shorter than its arc,
for he raised the rabbit again, and instead of
following him through the shrubbery as usual, he took
the short cut to the drain, and was ready and in
waiting on the rabbit when he arrived, and caught him.

A somewhat similar instance is communicated to me by Mr. William Cairns, of Argyll House, N.B.:--

I was watching the operations of a little Skye terrier
on a wheatstack which was in the course of being
thrashed, when suddenly a very large rat bounced off,
just from under Fan's nose. It darted into a pit of
water about a dozen yards from the stack, and tried to
escape. Fan, however, plunged after, and swam for some
distance, but found she was being left behind. So she
turned to the shore again _and ran round to the other
side of the pit, and was ready and caught it just on
landing_.

I never saw anything more remarkable. If it was not
reason, I do not know how it is possible that it could
come much more closely to the exercise of that
faculty.

Dr. Bannister, editor of the 'Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases,' writes me from Chicago, that having spent a winter in Alaska, he 'had a good opportunity to study animal intelligence in the Eskimo dogs,' and he reports it as 'a fact of common occurrence,' when the dogs are drawing sledges on the ice near the coast, that on coming to sinuosities in the coast-line, they spontaneously leave the beaten track and strike out so as to 'cut across the windings by going straight from point to point' of land. This is frequently done even when the leading dog 'could not see the whole winding of the beaten track; he seemed to reason that the route must lead around the headlands, and that he could economise travel by cutting across.'

It will be remembered in connection with these dogs, that Mr. Darwin in the 'Descent of Man' (p. 75) quotes Dr. Hayes, who, in his work on 'The Open Polar Sea,' 'repeatedly remarks that his dogs, instead of continuing to draw the sledges in a compact body, diverged and separated when they came to thin ice, so that their weight might be more evenly [and widely] distributed. This was often the first warning which the travellers received that the ice was becoming thin and dangerous.' Mr. Darwin remarks, 'This instinct may possibly have arisen since the time, long ago, when dogs were first employed by the natives in drawing their sledges; or the Arctic wolves, the parent stock of the Esquimaux dog, may have acquired an instinct, impelling them not to attack their prey in a close pack when on thin ice.'

Mrs. Horn writes me:--

One morning, soon after his usual time for starting, I
saw the dog looking anxiously about, evidently afraid
that my brother had gone without him. He looked into
the room where we had breakfasted, but my brother was
not there. He went up two or three stairs, and
listened attentively. Then, to my astonishment, he
came down, and going to the hat-stand in the hall,
stood on his hind legs and sniffed at the great-coats
hanging there, undoubtedly trying to ascertain whether
my brother's coat was there or not.

Another correspondent (Mr. Westlecombe) writes:--

My cat had kittens, of which two were preserved, the
rest being drowned. The dog tolerated the two kittens,
but did not care about them with any friendship. When
the kittens were a few weeks old, I--finding that I
could get but one of them off my hands--determined to
kill the other, and, as the quickest mode of death, to
shoot it by a pistol close behind its head. The dog
saw me do this in my garden, and in a few minutes
afterwards she appeared with the other kitten dead in
her mouth; she had killed it. If that was not
reasoning I do not know what is.

Mr. W. F. Hooper writes me of a Newfoundland dog that was in the habit of accompanying the nursemaid and baby belonging to its mistress. On one occasion a keen wind began to blow, and the nursemaid drew her shawl over the child:--

The nursemaid had not taken many steps towards home
before her progress was barred by the dog, who placed
himself in the centre of the path and growled whenever
she advanced. She was much alarmed, and tried to coax
the dog to move, but Leo would not, and abated nothing
of the hostile display. Half an hour passed, and the
girl became nearly distracted. What could be the
matter with the dog? Was she to be a prisoner all day?
Would the animal fly at her throat? Was Leo suffering
from hydrophobia? These and similar questions crossed
the girl's mind. At length a suggestion of despair--it
was nothing more--occurred to her. She thought it
might win the dog round to good humour if she showed
it the baby; so she removed the folds of her shawl and
presented it at arm's length to the dog. The result
was magical, and far in excess of all expectation, for
not only did the dog cease to growl, but he began to
gambol and caress, and removed himself from the path
altogether, so that there was now a free course, and
home was soon reached. The explanation of the whole
affair is, when the nursemaid turned on her path
thinking she had gone sufficiently far, the dog missed
sight of the baby, and believed it was gone. Under
this impression the dog converted himself into a
sentinel, with the resolve that not one step should be
taken towards home without the baby; and faithfully
did the animal keep watch and ward until the
demonstration was given that the child had not been
left behind, but was still in the nurse's arms alive
and well. I think this is an exhibition of
intelligence worthy of being known to you.

I extract the following instance from Col. Hutchinson's 'Dog-breaking.' It is briefly alluded to in the 'Descent of Man.' The observer and narrator is Mr. Colquhoun:--

I may mention a proof of his sagacity. Having a couple
of long shots across a pretty broad stream, I stopped
a mallard with each barrel, but both were only
wounded. I sent him across for the birds. He first
attempted to bring them both, but one always struggled
out of his mouth: he then laid down one intending to
bring the other; but whenever he attempted to cross to
me, the bird left fluttered into the water; he
immediately returned again, laid down the first on the
shore and recovered the other. The first now fluttered
away, but he instantly secured it, and, standing over
them both, seemed to cogitate for a moment; then,
although on any other occasion he never ruffles a
feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the
other, and then returned for the dead bird.

The following, communicated to me by Mr. Blood, is a closely analogous, and therefore confirmatory case. He was out shooting with a companion, and three wild ducks were simultaneously dropped into a lake--one falling dead and the other two winged. Mr. Blood sent in his spaniel to retrieve,

and of course when the wounded birds saw her coming
they swam out, so that she first reached the dead
duck. She swam up to it, paused for a moment, and
passing it went after the nearest wounded bird. Having
caught this, she again hesitated, and apparently after
consideration she gave it a chop and let it go,
quieted for the present. She then caught and brought
to land the other wounded duck, and going back she
again reached the dead bird; but looking at the other
and seeing that it was again moving, she went out and
brought it in, and last of all brought the dead bird.
The dog was a first-rate retriever and never injured
game, so that it was an entirely new thing for her to
kill a bird.

Again, Mr. Arthur Nicols, in 'Nature,' vol. xix., page 496, says:--

Can we conceive any human being reasoning more
correctly than a dog did in the following instance?
Towards the evening of a long day's snipe-shooting on
Dartmoor, the party was walking down the bank of the
Dart, when my retriever flushed a widgeon which fell
to my gun in the river, and of course instantly dived.
I said no word to the dog. He did not plunge into the
river _then_, but galloped _down_ stream some fifty or
sixty yards, and then entered and dashed from side to
side--it was about twenty or thirty feet wide--working
up stream, and making a great commotion in the water
until he came to the place where we stood. Then he
landed and shook himself, and carefully hunted the
near bank a considerable distance down, crossed to
the opposite side, and diligently explored that bank.
Two or three minutes elapsed, and the party was for
moving on, when I called their attention to a sudden
change in the dog's demeanour. His 'flag' was now up
and going from side to side in that energetic manner
which, as every sportsman knows, betokens a hot scent.
I then knew that the bird was as safe as if it was
already in my bag. Away through the heather went the
waving tail, until twenty or thirty yards from the
bank opposite to that on which we were standing there
was a momentary scuffle; the bird just rose from the
ground above the heather, the dog sprang into the air,
caught it, came away at full gallop, dashed across the
stream, and delivered it into my hands. Need I
interpret all this for the experienced sportsman? The
dog had learned from long experience in Australia and
the narrow cañadas in the La Plata that a wounded duck
goes down stream; if winged, his maimed wing sticks
out and renders it impossible for him to go up, so he
will invariably land and try to hide away from the
bank. But if the dog enters at the place where the
bird fell, the latter will go on with the stream for
an indefinite distance, rising now and then for
breath, and give infinite trouble. My dog had found
out all this long since, and had proved the
correctness of his knowledge times out of number, and
by his actions had _taught me_ the whole art and
mystery of retrieving duck. His object, I say without
a doubt, because I had numberless opportunities of
observing it, was to fling the bird and force it to
land by cutting it off lower down the stream. Then
assuming, as his experience justified him, that the
bird had landed, he hunted each bank in succession for
the trail, which he knew must betray the fugitive.

As showing in a higher, and therefore rarer degree, the ratiocinative faculty in dogs, I may quote a brief extract from my British Association lecture:--

My friend Dr. Rae, the well-known traveller and
naturalist, knew a dog in Orkney which used to
accompany his master to church on alternate Sundays.
To do so he had to swim a channel about a mile wide;
and before taking to the water he used to run about a
mile to the north when the tide was flowing, and a
nearly equal distance to the south when the tide was
ebbing, 'almost invariably calculating his distance so
well that he landed at the nearest point to the
church.' In his letter to me Dr. Rae continues: 'How
the dog managed to calculate the strength of the
spring and neap tides at their various rates of
speed, and always to swim at the proper angle, is most
surprising.'

As a confirmatory case, I may also quote an extract from a letter sent me by Mr. Percival Fothergill. Writing of a retriever which he has, he says:--

I have seen her spring overboard from our gangway 16
feet from the water-line. The tides ran more than 5
knots, and she invariably came down to a little wharf
abreast the ship, and gazed intently for small pieces
of stick or straw, and having thus ascertained the
drift of the tide (did as you mention of another dog),
ran up tide and swam off. The sentry on the forecastle
always kept a look-out for the dog, and threw over a
line with a bowling knot, and she was hauled on board.

But one day she was observed to wait an unusual time
on the wharf; no wood or straw gave her the required
information. After waiting some time, she lay down on
the planks, and dropped one paw into the water, and
found by the feel which way the tide ran, got up, and
ran up stream as usual.

Mr. George Cook writes me that he recently had a pointer, which one morning, when the grass was covered with frost, dragged a mat out of his kennel, from which he had got loose, to the lawn beneath the house windows, where he was found lying upon the mat, which thus served to protect him from the frost. The distance over which he had dragged the mat for this purpose was about 100 yards. Mr. Cook adds: 'I have since frequently seen him bring this mat out of his kennel and lay it in the sunshine, shifting it if a shadow came upon the place where he had laid it.'

The following is sent me by the Rev. F. J. Penky. He gives me the name of his friend the canon, but does not give me express permission to publish it. In quoting his account, therefore, I leave this name blank. He says:--

The following is an instance of sagacity--indeed,
amounting to reason--in a dog, a French poodle that
belonged to Colonel Pearson (not the lately
beleaguered colonel at Ekowe, but a Colonel Pearson
living some years ago at Lichfield). The circumstance
happened to a friend of mine, Canon ----, rector of
----. I have the story from his own lips, but I have
no permission for his name to be used in any
publication, should the story be thought worthy of
it. My friend the canon, I may say, has no leanings.
Being a guest at luncheon with the dog's master, my
friend fed the dog with pieces of beef. After luncheon
the beef was taken into the larder. The dog did not
think he had his fair share. What did he do? Now he
had been taught to stand on his hind legs, put his paw
on a lady's wrist, and hand her into the dining-room.
He adopted the same tactics with my friend the canon,
stood on his hind legs, put his paw on his arm, and
made for the door. To see what would follow, Canon
---- suffered himself to be led; but the sagacious
dog, instead of steering for the dining-room, led him
in the direction of the larder, along a passage, down
steps, &c., and did not halt till he brought him to
the larder, and close to the shelf where the beef had
been put. The dog had a small bit given him for his
sagacity, and Canon ---- returned to the drawing-room.
But the dog was still not satisfied. He tried the same
trick again, but this time fruitlessly. The canon was
not going again with him to the larder. What was Mori
to do? And here comes the instance of reason in the
poodle. Finding he could not prevail on the visitor to
make a second excursion to the larder, he went out
into the hall, took in his teeth Canon ----'s hat from
off the hall table, and carried it under the shelf in
the larder, where the coveted beef lay out of his
reach. There he was found with the hat, waiting for
the owner of the hat, and expecting another savoury
bit when he should come for his hat.

Many anecdotes might be adduced of the cleverness which some dogs show in finding their way by train; but I shall give only three, and I select these, not only because they all mutually corroborate one another, but likewise because they all display such high intelligence on the part of the dogs.

Mr. Horsfall, in 'Nature,' vol. xx., p. 505, says:--

Last year we spent our holidays at Llan Bedr,
Merionethshire. Our host has a house in the above
village, and another at Harlech, a town three miles
distant. His favourite dog, Nero, is of Norwegian
birth, and a highly intelligent animal. He is at
liberty to pass his time at either of the houses owned
by his master, and he occasionally walks from one to
the other. More frequently, however, he goes to the
railway station at Llan Bedr, gets into the train, and
jumps out at Harlech. Being most probably unable to
get out of the carriage, he was on one occasion taken
to Salsernau, the station beyond Harlech, when he
left the carriage and waited on the platform for the
return train to Harlech. If Nero did not make use of
'abstract reasoning' we may as well give up the use of
the term.

Miss M. C. Young writes to me:--

You may perhaps think the following worthy of notice,
as illustrating the comparative failure of _instinct_
in an animal which has begun to _reason_. A friend of
mine has a mongrel fox-terrier of remarkable
intelligence, though undeveloped by any training. This
dog has always shown a great fondness for accompanying
any of the family on a railway journey, often having
to be taken out of the train by force. One morning in
the summer of 1877 the groom came, in great distress,
to say that Spot had followed him to the station, and
jumped into the train after a visitor's maid who was
going to see her friends, and he (the groom) felt sure
the dog would be stolen. The railway is a short single
line, with three trains down and up each day, and my
friend is well known to all the officials, so she sent
to meet the next train, when the guard said the dog
(apparently finding no _friend_ in the train) had
jumped out at a little roadside station about five
miles distant. Most dogs would have found their way
home easily, though the place itself was strange, but
Spot did not appear till late in the evening, after
ten hours' absence, and _dead tired_. On inquiry we
found that the guard had seen nothing of her at 9
A.M., at 12 A.M., at 1 P.M., nor at 4 P.M.; but when
he reached the little station on his return at 5.30,
'she was walking up and down the platform like a
Christian,' jumped into his box, and jumped out again
of her own accord at the right station for her home.
She had evidently spent the interval in trying to find
her way home on foot, and not succeeding, had resolved
on returning the way she came.

Lastly, for the following very remarkable case I am indebted to my friend Mrs. A. S. H. Richardson:--

The Rev. Mr. Townsend, incumbent of Lucan, was
formerly an engineer on the Dundalk line of railway.
He had a very intelligent Scotch retriever dog, which
used to have a habit of jumping into any carriage in
which Mr. Townsend travelled; but this had been
discontinued for a year when the following incident
happened. Mr. Townsend and the dog were on the
platform at Dundalk station; Mr. Townsend went to get
a ticket for a lady, and during his absence the dog
jumped into a carriage, and when the train started,
was carried down to Clones. There he found himself
alone when he jumped out; he went into the
station-master's office and looked about, then into
the ticket-collector's and searched there, and then
ran off to the town of Clones, a mile distant. There
he searched the resident engineer's office, and not
finding his master, returned to the station and went
to the _up_ platform. When the up train arrived, he
jumped in, but was driven out by the guard. A ballast
train then drew up, going on to a branch line which
was being constructed to Caran, but which was not
finished yet. The dog travelled on the engine as far
as the line went, and then ran the remaining five
miles to Caran, where Mr. Townsend's sister lived. He
visited her house, and not finding his master, ran
back to the station, and took a return train to
Clones, where he slept, and was fed by the
station-master. At four in the morning he took a goods
train down to Dundalk, where he found Mr. Townsend.

It would be easy to continue multiplying anecdotes of canine intelligence; but I think a sufficient number of instances have now been given for the only purpose that I have in view--namely, that of exhibiting in a connected manner the various psychological faculties which are presented by dogs, and the level of development to which they severally attain. I may again remark that I have selected these instances for publication from among many others that I could have given, only because they conform to one or other of the general principles to which I everywhere adhere in the quoting of facts. That is to say, these facts are either matters of ordinary observation, and so intrinsically credible; or they stand upon the authority of observers well known to me as competent; or they are of a kind which do not admit of mal-observation; or, lastly, they are well corroborated by similar accounts received from independent observers. I think, therefore, that this sketch of the psychology of the dog is as accurate as the nature of the materials admits of my drawing it. If it is fairly open to criticism on any one side, I believe it is from the side of the dog-lovers, who may perhaps with justice complain that I have ignored a number of published facts, standing on more or less good authority, and appearing more wonderful than any of the facts that I have rendered. To this criticism I have only to answer that it is better to err on the safe side, and that if the facts which I have rendered are sufficient to prove the existence of all the psychological faculties which the dog can fairly be said to possess, it is of less moment that partly doubtful cases should be suppressed, where the only object of introducing them would be to show that some particular faculties were in some particular instances more highly developed than was the case in the instances here recorded.

FOOTNOTES:

[263] _Descent of Man_, p. 74.

[264] So many cases are on record of large dogs (especially of the Newfoundland breed) throwing troublesome curs into the water, and again rescuing them if they show danger of drowning, that we can scarcely fail to accept them as true. Such cases exhibit a wonderful play of human-like emotions.

[265] _Descent of Man_, p. 71.

[266] For many other instances of sheep-dog sagacity, see Watson, _Reasoning Power of Animals_, under 'Shepherd's Dog.'

[267] _Naturalist's Library_, vol. x., p. 154 (quoted by Watson).

[268] Since my MS. went to press I have myself met with a striking display of the recognition of a portrait by a dog. The portrait was one of myself, and the dog a half-bred setter and retriever of my own.

[269] _Missionary Travels_, chap. i.

[270] _Illustrations of Instinct_, p. 179.