“PETER THE MUTT.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3772, 27 March 1928, Page 4

“PETER THE MUTT.”

A DIRTY DOG. HE “WENT WEST.” iS,ome years ago I lost a. favourite terrier that had shared my joys and sorrows for nearly nine years. I said then that never again would I give my heart to a dog to tear, ■but a month ago some one insinuatel into: my'exactions a gentleman with four legs and four thousand wiles that had come to be known as Peter the Mutt. He is a cross between a Sealyham, a drain pipe, and an imp straight out of Hades, but into his soul there was dropped a spark of the best there is in human nature. A few days ago (writes Andrew Soutar in the London Daily News), I lost him for three hours. We live quite near to the high road, and the motor-cars sweep past like a cyclone. I tore off my smoking jacket, put on a mackintosh —-for it was raining—and searched the high road for two miles.

iWe said to each other, “He’s gone west!” It was true. The best bedroom is in the west of the house. And he was safely between the sheets of the bed in that room. He was dirty, but not nearly as dirty as the bed. He was asleep, and in his dream he was chasing a stoat across the garden and digging him out of the hole into which he had chased him. The lady who rules looked at me and said: “Do you call that a dog?” He loves to watch me gardening. He waits until the sweat rolls down my forehead, then he walks all over the newly-turned earth and says: “You should double trench, guv’nor, or engage a real gardener.” He got his teeth mixed up in wire-netting the other day because he could not fight his way down a burrow in the orchard. I. disentangled him, and told him he was a fool. He wagged his tail and said: “Your trouble is increasing years. I’m trying to keep the rabbits from coming in to eat your vegetables so that they can’t get out when they do.” (I fancy he’s an Irish throwback). Sometimes I tell myself that it were better to get rid of him because he may land me in all sorts of trouble. He has a haibit of biting legs and tearing trousers of tradesmen. I say to myself: “I’ll get rid of this mutt, who hasn’t the manners of a well-bred dog.” I hen I look at him as he lies on my best chair, with his nose resting on his fore paws and his eyed looking up into mine; he winks and says: “You wait, guv’nor, till I’ve grown up, and we’ll have the time of our lives, and I’ll be faithful to you, and love you, and go whichever way you wish to go when we’re walking. And when you’re feeling that human life hasn’t much to offer, I’ll' just push my cold nose up to your knee and say: “How goes it, guv’nor? And you’ll know that I was worth while although I am a mutt. How a dog takes hold of you when all the rest of the world is cold and clammy! . . . “Peter! Get off that chair! ... All right, old boy, I’ll get on it with you. Hang the dirt!”