CHAPTER I 



DOGS 



What shall we say of the dog? The close companion of 

 man almost from the beginning, his praises have been sung 

 in every tongue. The literature of the v^orld contains 

 countless eulogies of his devotion and courage, so that little 

 now remains to be said. The savage wolf-dog of our almost 

 equally savage ancestors has become the pampered pet of 

 modern civilization ; but the sterling characters which made 

 him indispensable in those old days have increased with 

 the passage of time. That the dog was of the utmost im- 

 portance to primitive man we may not doubt. His services 

 to men who lived chiefly on meat must have been incalculable, 

 and it is probable that to this fact the domestication of the 

 dog is due. Aboriginal men in all parts of the world 

 still have their packs of half -wild dogs, often obviously 

 descended, at least in part, from native feral species. 



Just when the dog first became associated with man we do 

 not know. The facts are shrouded in the mysteries of the 

 origin of our race itself, but it must have occurred at a 

 very remote period, for the Romans had well-established 

 breeds, separated into groups, according to their ability in 

 hunting, running, fighting, flock-tending, etc. 



The ancestry of the dog has been the occasion of much 

 controversy. Many naturalists have considered that it is 

 descended from a single ancestor, such as the common wolf 

 of Europe. The wonderful diversity in breeds of modern 

 dogs has been held to disprove this claim and point to a 

 number of foundation strains. But a consideration of the 

 equal variation among other domestic creatures, noticeably 



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