Dogs That Don't Bite

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 804, 17 December 1954, Page 22

Dogs That Don't Bite

by

SUNDOWNER

NOVEMBER 12

eyes are younger than mine, fresher, freer, more catholic, and more alert, has sent me a number of the Wide World magazine in which a contributor follows 2300 sheep and goats from a village near Marseilles to the "high alpine meadows within a _ stone’s throw of Italy," It is a journey of approximately 200 miles, made in thirteen stages, and . CORRESPONDENT whose

ending 8000 feet above sea level. To escape traffic

and heat most of the travelling is done by night, and if we forget the assistance given by the contributor himself and a photographer, the work is done by four men and six dogs, who are all footsore and very weary before they come to rest in the uplands, I, of course, knew nothing about this article when I referred in a recent note to the shepherds in Don Quixote, and I am slightly astonished to discover how little the life of a Mediterranean shepherd has changed in 400 vears. I suggested in that note, which arose out of something I had seen in a book on the evolution of the Merino, that 500 seemed to be too many sheep for one drover in the conditions in which Cervantes’ shepherds must have lived and worked, But that is precisely the number the French shepherds follow today, They work in teams, as the author of the Merino book said the shepherds of Spain did centuries ago. And they travelled fifteen miles a day for a fortnight on end without dropping many sheep by the way. They lost no sheep at all,.as far as I can judge, in the Wide World journey, but there was a truck for the transport of sheep which fell lame; and the young lambs were left be-| hind, On the same journey a vear earlier’

50 sheep had been killed by lightning. * Pa #

NOVEMBER 13

WAS particularly interested in the dogs in the Wide World story, which are described by the author as "half sheep-dog and half wolf," but in the accom_panying photographs look more like a cross between a sheep dog and a retriever. This, I imagine, could be a serviceable blend for dogs whose chief job is to keep sheep moving on dry, hot, steep roads. It would also be safer than the wolf mixture for guarding sheep by night. Wolves have not been a zood foundation for dogs for ten thousand years and longer, and in any case. most of France’s wolves today are in zoos. I suspect that the wolf cross in Europe is about as useful, and not quite as common, as the dingo cross in Australia. A few could be produced accidentally, and a few more experimentally. but the strain in both cases must soon disappear from animals

whose average life is ten years, or a little less. It would appear, too, that the shepherds of France have about the same faith in tall stories as the shepherds of Australia and New Zealand, and the

same luck in finde ing receptive ears. Their dogs, they

told our author, are taught to pinch but not to bite-to apply just enough pressure with their fangs to make the sheep obey, and they "must never break the skin." There is a fortune waiting at Addington for the first man to import one of them. But he should also, when he applies for his import licence, ask for authority to bring in one of the dogs that will "spend the whole day searching for a lost lamb and, when they find the wanderer, pin it down gently with their paws and then bark loudly to summon their master." Those lads, at least, came straight from Cervantes. But noble though they are, and price-less-nine or ten thousand francs seems to be their value — French sheepdogs are not allowed the Australian and New Zealand privilege of mutton from the mob. While the shepherds devoured "rashers of home-cured bacon and great hunks of bread," the dogs were given a mess of polenta and "threw themselves ravenously on this thick yellow paste." I don’t think we need further proof that the wolf has forgotten where he came from, o * *

T is a long jump from the Alps to the mountains of Cumberland, and longer from Cervantes to Scott. But I had no sooner written my last note than the mailman brought me a Countryman, and as I always begin, once I have looked at the illustrations,

NOVEMBER 15

with Robertson-Scott’s "In the Country | and Out of It," I came very soon on this entry: The account of how, in the Peak District at the end of March, a year-old collie was discovered watching by the body of its master, an octogenarian shepherd missing since mid-December, recalled to many of ' us the story of the fox-terrier that guarded its master’s body for three months in 1805 on Helvellyn. Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott each wrote a poem about it. That admirable little paper "Cumbria" recently had an illustration of the memorial stone with its long inscription. I wonder how big a number that "many of us" means in New Zealand. I

had to think hard before I could myself recall Words-

worth’s poem, and then search for a quarter of an hour before I found it. But I have not recalled Scott’s contribution yet, twenty-four hours later, and when I decided yesterday to revive my memory by studying an index to Scott's first lines, I could find no poetry of Scott’s on my shelves but Marmion, the Lady of the Lake, and the Lay of the Last Minstrel, which every young poet today knows to be jingling nonsense. I have no intention of reading them again to see whether I have learnt anything or forgotten anything in 50 years, but I remember how disturbed (and _ secretly pleased) I was, when I read what Whitman said to Traubel about Scott in one of those Camden conversations which Traubel thought would make him as famous as Boswell (as they might have done if Whitman had lived another year or two and Traubel had controlled his own ego). A habit I had once of dating my books shows that I read Whitman’s tribute 46 years ago, and I was not bold enough in 1908 to say openly that I still admired Scott. I did, however, then openly worship Whitman, and. his tribute to Scott gave me some dark thoughts, first about myself and then about him. The search for the Camden conversations was successful in a few minutes, and it gives me no embarrassment at all today to quote a passage like this: "How I am indebted to Scott no one can tell -I couldn’t tell it myself-but it has permeated me through and through. If you could reduce the Leaves to their elements you would see Scott unmistakably active at. the roots." What embarrasses me is the thought that I ceased reading Scott nearly 50 years ago, and in the meantime have even elbowed him off my shelves. (79 be continued)