The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1878-01-29 00:00:00

'agricultural itcaus.

DOGS:
• PLY Cl TEM 111111•Ja. IT " comm."
tic' Whitehall Barter")

I see with surprise and regret that the Commis-
sioners of Inland Revenue are about to establish all
oi,er England various persons who are to exercime the
inquisitorial duties of finding out the people that do
not pay the dog-tax. and then said persons ere to
rectum no salary, but to be paid one-hall of all At fins
thy brisig to iAe Revenuer. These persons are to be
selected from superannuated policemen, whose honesty
is to be above disputa Certainly it needs an extra-
ordinarily honest man to resist linking. accusations,
when on the making of them all his Income is to
depend.
It is to be fervently hoped that, before really
on this absurd idea, the Inland Revenue OfeectbA
think twice before establishing an official spy in the
towns and villages of England, but if a spy they must
have, in the name of justice let him be well d. and
not driven to rely for his maintenance on the trump-
ing up of vexatious charges. If such an ides is
parented in and carried out, it will simply have this
effect: that the official spy will wink at the rearing of
innumerable poppies that he may, when the six months
of their legal immunity is over, prosecute the owners
of the puppies; in nine cases out of ten the owners
will be unable or unwilling to pay the tax and fine, and
the puppies will be killed: mother and entirely
needless addition to the yet sum of animal misery.
It is rarely open to grave doubt whether ata. ,
ionises • merely n one for the sake of register-
ing
the owner's name) is at all a proper tax at stray
time- the poor man has often a true and touching
love foe his mongrel, and nothing is surer to humanise
the heart, hardened by toil and privation than the
Innocent affection for a dumb animal. But It is on all
sides admitted that the brinsting.np of what are called
" seinen& pups should be curtailed by the means of
this taxation; now the institution of a professional
spy, as described by the Revenue Office, whose salary
I, to cone, out of the penalties he can inflict on his
neighbour,, will only increase this evil ten-fold. The
officer will weal puppies to be brought up by the
hundred; for, without dogs to complain of and get
slain, he will have no money in his pane- No doubt
superannuated policemen may be all persons of •
perfectly exalted moral character; but still it may
certainly be questioned whether even their austere
virtue will be proof against ouch a bait to temptation
as is thus to be for ever dangling before their eyes.
To have no bread and cheese unless they can find •
dog that ought not to be kept and put a halter round
its neck I—the ingenuity of official Mephistopheliam
could no further go. And the luckless superannuated
policeman will be even less beloved In his neighbour-
hood than he was in the days before his superannu•
ation.

In real and sober truth, whilst it is possible that •
nominal tax and general registry of dogs may perhaps
be desirable, any further legidetion about dogs wake'
far more mischief than it hinden. There are many
things which are bast left to the common sense of the
general public to settle smomst themselves, and the
keeping of dogs is one of them. The epileptic dimmest
which are Ignorantly classified ea rabies, have been
enormously Increased since the Government meddled
with mnales and chains. Dogs am Wielated for on
much as illogical and unjust a prinepk as would be
shown if, in legislating for the preustion of clisesse.
rows of helpless laundresses were hanged by the neck
in every street because it is passible that scarlet fever
and small-pox are occasionaly conveyed in the linen-
beast. In real truth, while there is so much grave
matter to be attended to that is never touched, it
would be very much better if the Legislature left the
dogs alone. All the edictal about them produce nothing
but evil fruit, for the people who will take the
trouble to obey these edicts are not the people to
treat dogs with the cruelty and careiseenees which
lead to all the mischief that is ever dons by our four-
footed friends; a mischief, sitar all, very small in its
sum. All the dogs in Great Britain and Inland
never slew in ten years am many human beings as one
lead mine, one hicifer match manufactory, ODO railway
company, or one refuse-choked river slays in a yew.
When human life is held so cheap that capitalists are
allowed to pursue manufactures which are calmly
shown by statistics to kill all employed in
them before they can reach middle-sg., and
whilst such manufactures are deemed quits
" honest" and justifiable, though destroying human
bodies with a frightful celerity and a mathematical
certainty, it is =utterly &betel (cr would be aboard,
were not its consequences too painful to leave ns any
mood for jesting) to me the whole hue-and-cry of a
nation out against dumb animals, whose uttermost
possible average of crime is that one in a million may
bite one out of ten

It has been, no doubt, a clever and ingenious device
of the medical gentlemen who are impatient of the
reetrictions on vivisection/ and eager to obtain
licensee for their private experiments to start as they
have done this panic about hydrophobia., as they love
to call it; before • case of tetanus or epileptic con-
vulsions it has served their purpose well to shahs their
beads and murmur the dreaded word, and find out
that the patient was scratched by • cat or grazed by a
puppy three or four years ago. Surgeons know
thoroughly wall how all-sufficient it is to inoculture •
panic, and how admirably imagination and a state of
terror can produce all the symtome of the malady
feared. Here, in Italy, a woman was foaming and
raring, not long ago, in what she and all around her
thought was hydrophobia ; a very precious relic in
which she believed was brought from • church and
Laid down on her body; all the symptoms cased and
the woman recovered. The doctors know better than
anyone the extent to which the nervee of the public
can be wrung tin until nervous excitement counterfeits
any and every disease. But it has suited their purpose
to raise this plague of terror; to how absurd • Meth
the public credulity goes was shown the other day
when in a grave and weighty journal space was given
to an acount by • obscure country veterinary surgeon
of a horse who died in • few minutes of rabbet ; the
horse had been scratched by • cat, and it thought had
been bitten by a dog! This sounds like • burlesque.
But the account was given in sober seriousness, and
headed" Hydropkobia !"
I have talked with many eminent veterinarim, and
their experience and belief I have invariably found the
sere—that raja tannic is the res 7 reser of all
maladies. One very eminent in his profession lately
told me that he was certain that nineteen out of
twenty so-called "mad" dogs were dogs in the mere
mixure of distempor fits. I have recently lost two
young dogs in these fits, and I am
.convinced that the
frothing of the mouth, the convulsions, the fixed stare
of the eyes, the unconscious biting of the air, are all
symptoms that the ignorant would certainly take for
mashiess • especially since the dog, between them fits,
is endowised with a wonderful vitality and would, if
not domed, race straight on for miles till another fit
mixed him. Now, these fits, though terrible to see,
are quite harmless to man. They Wald the dog
Meraly when distemper is in e system and has
l th
unrelieved by discharge at the eyes and noes.
If people who keep dogs would but know a little
more about them, all these exwmations and follies
rampant about these creature would fall to the ground
like empty wind-begs. But very_ few take any
trouble to study their pets morally or thrilosllT
They do not even study their children so ; ow can it
be expected that they will their dogs? All kinds of
nostrums are thought "physic for dogs;" their own
natural physic—the couch gram—is rarely to be found,
and when found, the titan are the roads of Liable.
tore too often prevents its being reached; long eon-
filament, cruel inaction, cramped limbs, unnatural
repression of all kinds, an the "education" the dog
receives. His own active volition, buoyant spirits,
eager love of fun and adventure are all crushed out of
him; bq is dealt with as if he were • machine, and he
is artificially rendered • coward or a wild bead.
In a wady of "Psyraologie For re," • adrilirwhiT
written and deserving of the perusal of all thinkers and
students, • friend of mine, the kfarquis Bourbon del
Monte, speaking of the observant intelligence and
strong reasoning powers of the dog, relates how his
own dog, always accompanying him in his walks, but
never in his rides, looks at his feet the moment he
enters the hall, and if it Seel spurs there, goes away
sorrowful, but if it see none leaps up= him,
with joy. He continues to relate how • priestbart3
known to him, and living still in • village near
Florence, fell one day into a pond, his hat caught in a
branch above the ord ; a dog OM was with him tried
to help him for a few minutes, but finding its efforts
in vain, seised the hat of the bough and darted of
with it to the priest's house, where the eight of the
hat and the disquietude of the dog roused Or alarm
of the sarcristan, and the household following the
animal, reached the piece of water in time to save the
life of the poor curate. He proceeds to ask with
justice, in what quality are them acute and accurate
powers of disownment and deduction different to the
mental reasonings by which human balsa guide their
acts? I have myna, known many instances in my
OWD days of • 'Miler kind, arguing the shrewdest
observation and reflection.
I may cite three out out of many: My Newfound-
land, Bulb, was the most perfectly sweet-tampered of
all created creatures, yet once he saw • man hurling a
?=pot at • woman,zd once be saw a man
• little child ; on occasion he sprang on
the man and knocked him down. Bull& was • most
daring swimmer, and never so happy as in the lee; 7ot
one day, when unseen by me the tide was coming In
and surrounding me. the dog by his violent barking
and (=tie aorta to push me from the road I was
pursuing, saved me from what in all liklihood would
have been death: the sea was no danger to him, but
some way or another be knew that is was iiit=t
danger for use ;it would be absurd to call this in
it was the highest hind of reasoning power' it was
reasoning cried instinct. My St. Bernard, Isla, had
• friend Ins dog that lived Ma tali ; he met the calf'dog, in his weir and tor him with him, but for more
than a year his friendship never went so for asi to
invitethe calf-dog, which was• pointer, into the hone;
one day to my surprise he rine from his walk,
bringing the pointer, whose name waiibrelnia=
with him, pushed his noes on to my
and ride me to understand that he wished me
to feed his friend; on Inquiry Iks :and that
the pointer was starring, hav been a day
or two before beaten and c out of
the anti, for breaking some flowerpot, : it is certain
that Isla must have known of his distress, for from
that moment he made Antonio at home In his own
house. I have • little Maltese, called Lill, who knows
by a glance at the kind of dress I wear what I am
going to do, and is joyful or sorrowful accordingly;
this little dog i.& very Hwprigun about his pro=
and bosrdaf Limits, Ws, bones, le., are las
row de en caustic; OM day in en hotel by the Res he
was given • wing of partridge when he was not
hungry; some open newspapers lay on a couch, he
jumped up, put the porridge into • newspaper, with
paws and nose crumpled the newspaper into -a parcel,
and pared the whole under a cushion • he then went
out for • walk, was absent several hours on the
shore; returning home he darted to the sok milli
his parcel, and ate the partridge wing; oceselonenyhis
treasures in his &berm are found by one of the
_big
dogs and gobbled up; on entering the room LIE
Invariably picks out the right asedre. however
Innocent the guilty one may try to look, and pounoss
on him in fiercest wrath, for Llli (the ehle of a rabbit)
would not hesitate for a moment about fighthig a Ike.