Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-01-01

year. we'd had plenty. and even sold a
lot of EN-. I'm not accusing anybody.
| don't know positively to this day who
it was that poisoned Bluey. and ! don't
father. anyway. no matter what his
father does.
or course, I had lot of other dogs
besides Bluey. 1 cannot. however. place
my hand over my heart and conscien-
tiously say that any of the dogs that
| owned as a boy was what you might
call a sure-enough success. never
seemed to be able to get hold Of a dog
that had a proper sense of dignity.
If you judge a dog by the way he
holds his tal-and that isn't such a bad
way of judging just an ordinary dog
why, then, all of my dogs we're rank
failures. / never owned a dog that
would hold his tail up. 1 knew perfectly
well, even then. that dog who habitual
ly held his tail up was the right kind
Of a dog, and that a dog who permitted
his tail to droop and flop around all
the time was NOT the right kind of
dog. Well, mine all had droopy. fioppy
tails. / tried to make myself believe
idiosyncrasy, perhaps denoting genius on
the part of my dogs. but all the time
| had feeling. deep down. that my dogs
were fundamentally wrong. and that
was simply trying to over-persuade my
self. ] wanted to give my dogs the best
of it. l wanted to give them the benefit
OF the doubt. l strove as hard as I could
strive to impute lineage to them. But
it was no go. They simply would not
act up to my imputations.
/ never had dog. either, that would
come to me when 1 called or whistled
to him any more willingly than he'd go
to anybody else that called whistled to
him. This was a keen grief to me. 1t
was depressing, after I'd called and
whistled to Jerry from the back yard gate
for about ten straight minutes, to have
Jerry finally turn and look at me, from
where he sat on his launches, i'm a
snippy, disregardful sort of a way. and
then turn his head away from me and
scratch his ear with his hind paw and
then squat down where he was as though
l wasn't even on the map.
1t was humilating. when | whistied
for Biffy, and he took his own good time
i'm picking up his feet and ambling to-
ward me. to have him turn smack-da u
around in his tracks and trot off to the
boy who whistled for him up the street
a boy who had no proprietary interest III
Biffy whatever This, Of course, gave the
other boy the laugh on me. In fact. other
boys had the laugh on me right along in
the matter of their dogs and my dogs
Other boys, YOU see, owned dogs whose
ta1lS were up all the time or tnat even
curled tightly to their backs, whereas, as
I say. every dog that l ever owned lun,-
moXed around with his tail dragging
which. of course. gave those boys a cher
ished opportunity to lord il over me and
patronize me and throw figurative Eyes
and sometimes literaD dirt upon whatever
dog l happened to be possessed Of at the
time.
Other boys had dogs that would come
bounding to them at the very first call,
cluck or whistle, and that wouldn't even
dream of responding to anybody else's
summons: whereas my dogs not only
wouldn't pay any attention to my sum-
mons, no matter how peremptory. but
some of them would go flying, wagging
their fool tails, to any other boy who
wanted to give 'em a call purely for the
sake of thus triumphing over me. Don't
you ever believe that this wasn't hard 10
endure.
| knew plenty of boys whose dogs would
not only follow them to school, but carrs
the boys books to school in their mouths.
I think I'd have worn my fingers off try
ing to provide angel cake for dog that
would have followed me to school and
carried my books in his mouth. But
never even came anywhere near owning A
dog like that. / spent an entire school
vacation trying to train Snoops to carry
my books i'm his mouth.
BY dint of tremendous patience and de-
termination 1 finally got Snoops so that
he would carry my strapped books-just
a reader and rthmetic and Biography and
spellin' book-fOr nearly four or five feet
i'm the back yard before he'd drop them.
But I figured that if Snoops would only