On most days he looked in, ate his
dinner and had a nap on his straw, but he was not what you
would call a home-keeping dog.
One day I found him in, and after we had looked for about a
minute at each other, I squatting before the kennel, he with
chin on paws pretending to be looking through me at something
beyond, I addressed a few kind words to him, which he received
with the before-mentioned growl. I pronounced him a surly
brute and went away. It was growl for growl. Nevertheless I
was well pleased at having escaped the consequences in
speaking kindly to him. I am not a "doggy" person nor even a
canophilist. The purely parasitic or degenerate pet dog moves
me to compassion, but the natural vigorous outdoor dog I fear
and avoid because we are not in harmony; consequently I suffer
and am a loser when he forces his company on me. The outdoor
world I live in is not the one to which a man goes for a
constitutional, with a dog to save him from feeling lonely,
or, if he has a gun, with a dog to help him kill something.
It is a world which has sound in it, distant cries and
penetrative calls, and low mysterious notes, as of insects
and corncrakes, and frogs chirping and of grasshopper
warblers--sounds like wind in the dry sedges. And there are
also sweet and beautiful songs; but it is very quiet world
where creatures move about subtly, on wings, on polished
scales, on softly padded feet--rabbits, foxes, stoats,
weasels, and voles and birds and lizards and adders and
slow-worms, also beetles and dragon-flies.
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