CHAPTER IX. 



THE SHEEP-DOG. 



THE Sheep-dog holds a very high place among our domestic dogs, to which his great 

 usefulness and high intelligence fully entitle him. He has also had the honour of being 

 considered by no less an authority than the great naturalist Buffon the origin of all our other 

 varieties of dogs. Although this opinion of Buffon's is not now accepted by many, it is not 

 without considerable show of reason, for none of our domestic varieties approach so near in form 

 to the wild dog of India and Australia, and to the more closely-allied species of the Canidse. 

 This is, of course, much more marked in the rough working dogs, although these are not so hand- 

 some in the eyes of show-dog men. The latter, as a rule, know little practically of the work 

 required from Collies in moorland districts, and prefer a glossy thin-coated dog that a Scotch 

 mist would drench to the skin in half an hour, to the rough tyke that wears a coarse coat of 

 wet-resisting hair, with its under-jacket as close and thick as the wool on the sheep he tends- 

 These are the dogs that are light and sinewy in build, with long neck and head, ears certain 

 to be more or less pricked, the belly a bit tucked up, and the hind-quarters sloping back 

 to the well-let-down and sickle-shaped hocks, indicative of speed, and with a general outline, 

 as his lithe frame and shaggy coat are seen looming through the mist, not at all unlike 

 that of the wolf. 



Speculation on the origin of this dog, as of most other breeds, is, however, profitless. 

 We can only say that second to dogs used in the chase as we must suppose man to have 

 hunted wild animals for food before he advanced so far on the road to civilisation as to 

 keep flocks and herds the Sheep-dog must have been one of the earliest to come under 

 man's dominion and form part of his home stock. Consequently we find in the history 

 of Job the following direct allusion to the Sheep-dog : " But now they who are younger 

 than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of 

 my flock? This is however no proof that our Sheep-dogs are allied to or at all resemble the 

 dogs that Job and his contemporary flock-masters owned. In countries where the wolf is 

 common and the lion not unknown, their penchant for mutton had to be guarded against, 

 and for such use it is probable that a more powerful and fiercer dog was employed than 

 our modern Collie. Indeed this is the case at the present day ; and in Thibet the large 

 rough black-and-tan Mastiffs of the country are used to guard the flocks and herds. 

 At the Paris exhibition of dogs, 1878, a prize was awarded to a dog used in the 

 Pyrenees district as unlike our breed of Sheep-dogs as it is possible to conceive. It was 

 coarse, ungainly, slow, with a long matted coat, which on a Scotch mountain in the winter> 

 with its snows and alternating frosts and thaws, would get so clogged with balls of snow 

 that the dog would not be able to move with the alacrity necessary to get round a flock 

 of black-faced sheep. Moreover, it would so soon tire him that he would be practically useless 

 for hard work. 



Well-authenticated stories relating to the sagacity of the Sheep-dog or Collie, as the 

 10 



