124 Modern Dogs. 



grown, his coat is profuse, if soft and fluffy, and he 

 looks so well in the ring that the judge places him 

 over older and better dogs. Still, he cannot gallop, 

 he even walks badly, and when some eighteen 

 months old or so, he has degenerated into a sorry 

 object, and his show days are over. Few of the 

 most successful dogs of modern times improve with 

 age, as the old working collie and some of the 

 earlier winners did. See Charlemagne, already 

 alluded to, who beat all comers when eleven years 

 old. Cockie, his grandsire, was a better dog at four 

 years old than when he was less than half that age. 

 Which dogs of the modern type will last so well 

 as Mr. H. Ralph's Johnnie Norman, who, if a little 

 grown in skull substance, was as full of collie 

 character when we last saw him as he ever was. 

 Someone stole this dog. Perhaps the three best 

 dogs of the day that are likely to last are Metchley 

 Wonder, Stracathro Ralph, and Great Gun. They 

 may be seen winning perhaps two, three, or four 

 years hence, and they are not puppies now. But of 

 the hundreds of prize-winning collies now produced, 

 with few exceptions their successes are but ephe- 

 meral, and it is quite as mischievous to breed for 

 early maturity in a dog as it is to try to produce a 

 head so abnormal in its length as to quite change the 

 appearance of the unfortunate canine which carries it. 



