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It's queer how ugly some people are about their dogs. They'll keep them no matter how they worry other people, and even when they're snatching the bread out of their neighbors' mouths. But I say that is not the fault of the four-legged dog. A human dog is the worst of all. There's a band of sheep-killing dogs here in Riverdale, that their owners can't, or won't, keep out of mischief.
I think that even the worst enemies of the plains Indians hardly will accuse them of killing large numbers of bison, elk or deer merely for the pleasure of seeing them fall, or taking only their teeth. It has remained for the wolf, the sheep-killing dog and civilized man to make records of wanton slaughter which puts them in a class together, and quite apart from other predatory animals.
Every station-owner knows that sometimes the house-dogs are liable to take a sudden fit of sheep-killing. Any kind of dog will do it, from the collie downward. Sometimes dogs from different homesteads meet in the paddocks, having apparently arranged the whole affair beforehand. They are very artful about it, too.
Turn him over to the police!" somebody insisted, and a roar of indorsement hailed the demand. "Citizens, that would be like giving a mongrel cur a court trial for sheep-killing! This perverted infant simply needs dingbats!" He shouted the last word.
Breaking a sheep-dog The shepherd buys a pup His training He refuses to work He chases a swallow and is put to death The shepherd's remorse Bob, the sheep-dog How he was bitten by an adder Period of the dog's receptivity Tramp, the sheep-dog Roaming lost about the country A rage of hunger Sheep-killing dogs Dogs running wild Anecdotes A Russian sheep-dog Caleb parts with Tramp
My belief is that the pure-bred sheep-dog is indeed the last dog to revert to a state of nature; and that when sheep-killing by night is traced to a sheep-dog, the animal has a bad strain in him, of retriever, or cur, or "rabbit-dog," as the shepherds call all terriers.
When I was a boy on the pampas sheep-killing dogs were common enough, and they were always curs, or the common dog of the country, a smooth-haired animal about the size of a coach-dog, red, or black, or white. I recall one instance of sheep-killing being traced to our own dogs we had about six or eight just then.
The old grizzlies that killed the ewes to eat only the milk-bags were particularly dreaded by Ellen. She was a good shot with a rifle, but had orders from her father to let the bears alone. Fortunately, such sheep-killing bears were but few, and were left to be hunted by men from the ranch. Mexican sheep herders could not be depended upon to protect their flocks from bears.
To crush and kill for the mere sake of doing it, as a sheep-killing dog strangles fifty lambs in a night for the fun of hearing them bleat? Isn't there a bigger game? a game of mutual joys and hopes, of sunlight and laughter?" "But, Jim," the little financier protested, "I don't make men as they are, nor did I make conditions."
They were looked upon as simply "hangers on," or in other words, as yellow sheep-killing dogs, that if you would say "booh" at, would yelp and get under their master's heels. Mike Snyder was General George Maney's "yaller dog," and I believe here is where Joe Jefferson, in Rip Van Winkle, got the name of Rip's dog Snyder.
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