A FAITHFUL DOG. Remarkable Illustration of Fellow Sympathy Among Animals.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 216, 20 August 1887, Page 4

A FAITHFUL DOG. Remarkable Illustration of Fellow Sympathy Among Animals.

An eminent physician tells of what ho himself witnessed during the illness and after the death and burial of a favourite collie o* his own. The dorr was sick to death, and was taken to die quietly in the country, where the mother .of various puppies of the same breed was bringing up her family Directly the sick dog was taken down the bitch went to lie by his side, and never left him for the four days that ho survived — could not, indeed, be tempted away from his side. After his death his master had a grave dug for him, in which he was laid amidst a shower of primroses, with some little ceremony. The temale jumped down into the grave, and licked the poor old dog's ear, and was follow ed in so doing by all the puppies— all hi.* own children —while two dogs of a different breed stood, one on each side of the grave, wagging their tails, but showing no wish to descend and take leave of him iv this fashion. Then the bitch leaped out of the gioxe, followed by all her puppies, rushed into a ni'ighbou ii.il: Held, and began circling round and round it in a wild gallop of apparent delight. And the interpretation put upon thi,*> fidelity and farewell of hers, followed by thio burst of exuberant spirits, by the master was: "Duty ih\st and plea&me afterwauK"' The musing and the farewell were duties which had been discharged with all due tenderness t but once diocharued, the mother saw no reason why she should not take a thorough good romp with her childien. " Dead was dead, and gone was gone;' 1 mourning' was not pait of her conception of the exigencies of the situation. . Now, was that, or was it not, a true interpretation of what passed thiough that collio'b mind? If not, what was it that made her lie for four days by the dying dog, and then leap into the grave and gnu his e;ir a lick ? Perhaps the notion of duty ne\ei enteied her head ; it may have been sympathy ; leal trouble at seeing her old companion in so much tiouble that kept her at his side. But, then, what took her and all tlie puppies in to the gra\e ? That was not sympathy. Was it a sense of propriety; n feeling of what was due to the head of the family ; a last recognition ot what he had been and was to be no moic V If -o, would not that imply a sort of conventional tense oi status and dignity, a feeling of decoium : a recognition of appropiiato ne.--> of a ccitain kind of demeanour to a certain kind of occasion, and a t -cns>e, too, of the weight of those obligation 0 and of relief at their discharge, as cv pre'-ed by the subsequent gambols with her offspiing ? If all that might be really infened, what geims of an advanced eh - ilisation would not, be contained in the character of such dogs a^ thteo '! But who can judge how fat 1 it i» safe to go in interpieting by our human analogies what takes place in the heart otadumb creature?