328 



THIEVING DOGS AND HORSES 



It is now about eighty years since Sir Walter Scott told 

 some curious stories, proving how animals could be 

 deliberately trained by their owners to break the law, or 

 to help them to break it, all the while thinking they were 

 acting from the best motives, and only doing their duty. 

 It is, if we come to reflect, very difficult for a dog to learn 

 that he is worthy of praise if he defends his master's 

 property, while he is doing a very wicked thing if, at that 

 very master's bidding, he tries to get possession of some- 

 body else's. His only idea of the whole duty of dog is 

 to do what he is told. And a very good idea it is, too, 

 only it sometimes leads to trouble. Why, only a few 

 days ago a large boar-hound was trained by some Paris 

 thieves to fly at a man's throat at a given signal. The 

 man was nearly killed, but not before the dog and his 

 owners bad been caught by the police. The thieves were 

 taken to prison, and the dog to the lethal chamber. 



This little incident shows that the nature of dogs, as 

 well as that of men, is pretty much the same as when 

 Sir Walter was writing about them. Somewhere about 

 the year 1817 a constable made a complaint to the police 

 magistrate of Shadwell, a large district in the East of 

 London, that a horse in the neighbourhood had become 

 a confirmed hay-stealer. Every night, declared the 

 constable, that horse would walk boldly up to the stands 

 of hackney coaches in the parish of St. George's-in-the- 

 East, and eat as much hay as he wanted, after which he 



