4 The Dog Book 



Naturalists have their way of attempting to prove their claims, and 

 point to certain resemblances and characteristics. For instance, it is almost 

 universally claimed that the Eskimo and kindred breeds of the northern 

 latitudes are either domesticated wolves or descendants therefrom. Mr. 

 Bartlett, who was for many years the head of the London Zoological 

 Gardens, in his annual report for 1890, speaks of them as "reclaimed 

 or domesticated wolves. All wolves, if taken young and reared by man, 

 are tame, playful, and exhibit a fondness for those who feed and attend 

 to them." 



We will take the wolf-like dogs. They are the Eskimo (which will 

 include the husky and malamuth of our northern latitudes), Samoyede 

 Lapland dog, Swedish elkhound, and some might include the Chow Chow 

 and Pomeranian. Every one of these breeds possesses a feature which 

 the wolf does not, and it is the one point that would at once strike a dog- 

 breeder, though it apparently has never occurred to any naturalist: Every 

 one of them has the curled tail — in most cases, curled tightly over the back. 

 The last husky we saw was at large, outside John F. Schole's place at 

 Toronto, and was so wolf-like that we imagined it was a tame wolf that 

 he might have added to his curiosities. As it moved, we thought its tail 

 had been cut off, but, on approaching nearer, it was seen that the tail was 

 curled so closely on the quarters of the dog as not to be noticeable from a 

 distance. Now, it would require a lifetime, almost, to take a dog like that, 

 and, with kin showing the same characteristic, develope the progeny into 

 wolf-tailed dogs, and it would be equally difficult to take a lot of wolves, 

 interbreed them, and get a ring-tailed family. To change the carriage 

 of the tail is about the hardest thing a fancier can accomplish. How, there- 

 fore, could the uneducated inhabitant of the arctic regions, with no mate- 

 rial to cross with, put the tight-curled tail on his domesticated wolf .^ 



It occasionally happens that a dog of a ring-tailed breed developes a 

 tail that hangs down, and vice versa with one of the down-tailed breeds; 

 but dog-breeders are particularly cautious in breeding to such a dog, and 

 will only do so when thoroughly satisfied that it is purely an individual 

 sport, and the dog comes from a strain of good-tailed ones. So that while 

 there is always the possibility of getting a down-tailed Eskimo, we have to 

 take the breed as a whole, and by a recent authority it is one well described 

 as possessing the distinctive features of a foxy head, erect ears, stand-out 

 coat, dense undercoat, and tightly-curled tail. 



