Tag: Dogs Page 1 of 2

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 1, 1938.

“One of these days,” stated Jimmie Frise, “we’ll have to own a sporting dog.”

“A gun dog,” I agreed, “is a very delightful possession. I don’t suppose there is any more perfect companion in the world than a trained English setter.”

“I was thinking,” said Jim, “of a racing greyhound, as a matter of fact.”

“There you go,” I accused, “letting your basest instincts influence your affections. All you want is a dog to bet on.”

“There you go,” retorted Jimmie, “letting your prejudices make you cock-eyed even when looking at your friends.”

“You and your kind,” I declared, “have taken that noble beast, the horse, that has carried humanity and its burdens through the ages, that has borne us from country to country, that has accompanied us in the wars of all the ages, and what have you made of him? A skinny, over-legged, nerve-strung creature to amuse you by running madly in senseless circles, while you bet on him.”

“I am amused,” retorted Jim, “at the high moral tone with which you and your kind invest your own dislikes. You don’t like a little gamble because you’re too darned mean. Too tight.”

“The horse,” I said with deep emotion, “without which mankind could never have achieved civilization through agriculture. The horse, which was man’s first means of transportation in the dim dawn of trade and commerce, when the pack trains of Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome first began carrying goods across savage deserts and through mountain passes. The horse, which for 5,000 years was man’s only means of transportation. And today, what have you done to him? A stuffed skin on a merry-go-round.”

“Just because you can’t feel any thrill,” came back Jim, “at the sight of beautiful, high-bred animals competing; at the feeling of great excited crowds, at the humor of wagering among your friends; just because you are not sensitive to these things, I suppose they are wrong?”

“And now,” I continued sadly and loudly, “the dog. Man’s best friend. The one creature that came out of the primeval forest, of its own free will, to be man’s one friend and companion. What are you doing to him? Making him another stuffed hide, to run like a lunatic after a stuffed rabbit, around and around a howling arena.”

“Aw,” sighed Jim, “what’s the use of talking to some people?”

“The dog,” I said, “has been man’s companion for so many countless ages that special laws ought to be passed governing man’s attitude towards dogs. There ought to be a universal reverence for dogs. In the caves of prehistoric man are drawings showing cavemen hunting the mammoth, and there, beside the cavemen, are the dogs, assisting. All through the centuries the dog has helped man survive. Without dogs the human race might never have survived. In times of great famine, if it hadn’t been for dogs, men might have never got any meat, and so we would still be monkeys, nibbling nuts, roots and insects. Without dogs to help early man kill furbearing animals mankind might have frozen to death thousands of years ago. The whole tribe.”

A Game of Chance

“And it might interest you to know,” stated Jimmie, “that in those cave drawings, in the earliest of Babylonian sculptures, in all the Egyptian monuments and papyrus, what kind of a dog is it that was man’s companion and aid? Was it a setter, stupidly standing in a trance, pointing a little bird? Was it a spaniel, scuffling in the grass? Was it bulldog or pomeranian? Was it a hound or an Airedale or any kind of terrier for catching rats? No, sir. The dog that is shown all through the thousands of years of man’s earliest civilization, the dog that hunted the mammoths of the caves, the lions of Babylon and Egypt, was the greyhound!”

“Get away with you,” I scoffed.

“It’s a fact,” cried Jimmie. “Go and, look it up in your favorite encyclopaedia.”

“Do you mean to say,” I laughed scornfully, “that that wasp-waisted, herring-gutted, weasel-faced, slant-eyed daddy-long-legs of a mouse with the elephantiasis would hunt lions and sabre-toothed tigers?”

“The only dogs pictured on the ancient pyramids,” declared Jim quietly, “are greyhounds. The only dogs shown in the very earliest Etruscan pottery are greyhounds. In fact, there are many authorities who claim that the greyhound was, for nearly the whole of human history, the only dog man had. Just in the last couple of thousand years has man worked up these silly little breeds for chasing birdies and sitting on ladies’ laps.”

“I certainly would have supposed,” I said, “that it was mastiffs at least that early man used for hunting tigers.”

“No. The mastiff,” said Jim, “was developed fairly recently as a park ornament.”

“Well, if what you say is true about the greyhound,” I returned, “then all the greater pity that you should convert him into a game of chance.”

“In the furthest recorded history,” said Jim, “those early lovers of the greyhound raced him. The owners of the greatest hunting dogs amused themselves and the dogs and kept the dogs in hunting trim by holding races. This is not a new thing, greyhound racing. It is one of the oldest things we’ve got.”

“I don’t mind hunting,” I admitted. “Out in the open country, pitting hound against rabbit.”

“No,” laughed Jim, “you don’t mind it when some poor little creature has to lose its life. But when the quarry is an automatic rabbit, run by machinery, then it’s wicked.”

“I was just thinking of the evils of gambling,” I declared firmly.

“And what are the evils of gambling?” inquired Jim.

“Well,” I replied, “er-ah-um-everybody knows the evils of gambling.”

But my mind was busy with the picture of a good fast greyhound racing across the wide and pleasant fields of North York after a big imported English hare, one of those “jacks,” as we mistakenly call them, which are multiplying enormously here in eastern Canada.

Nothing More Exciting

 “Jim,” I asked, “do these racing greyhounds chase real rabbits, too?”

“My dear boy,” cried Jim, “ninety-nine per cent. of sport with greyhounds is out in the open, on wild rabbits. This indoor racing is just a sideline. Hunting greyhounds is called coursing. You take two greyhounds out into the country. They are on slip-leashes. You walk with them across the pastures, watching for a hare to jump. When the hare jumps you slip the leashes off the greyhounds. They hunt by sight, not by scent.”

“That would be very exciting,” I confessed.

“Exciting?” protested Jim. “Can you imagine anything more exciting? You hold your brace of hounds on leash. You and your friends spread out and quietly scuffle the meadows. The hare jumps. You shout and slip the leashes. The hounds race away. Boy, that’s sport right under your nose.”

“And what happens?” I inquired.

“Across the wide fields,” exulted Jimmie, “the two hounds race.”

“Ah, it’s a race?” I submitted, suspiciously.

“Certainly,” said Jim, “between the rabbit and the two hounds. They race, and the best hound wins. Neck and neck they race and overtake the hare. The hare makes a wild sideways leap, changing direction, and the greyhounds, owing to their speed and shape, have to swing away out wide. The best one makes the narrowest turn. Again and again they turn the hare. At last the best hound wins. He catches up with the hare. Snap. It’s over.”

“Are greyhounds expensive?” I asked.

“The reason I mentioned it,” said Jim, “is that the man who does our lawn, you know, Mr. Winterbottom, is a greyhound fancier and he was telling me about them.”

“What do they cost?” I pursued.

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, “Mr. Winterbottom practically offered to give me a greyhound. He imports them from England, for breeding. He pays as much as $300¹ for them.”

“Out of the question,” I concluded.

“Champions for breeding,” explained Jim. “His own pups he sells for $50 or even less. The one he was talking to me about is one of the $300 ones he imported from the Old Country. He’s had him for three years now and has imported newer ones to change the strain. He is willing to let this Major Gilbert of Tottlebury go practically for a good home.”

“Major Gilbert of Tottlebury?” I said.

“That’s the dog’s name,” said Jim. “It gets expensive, keeping a lot of greyhounds. So Mr. Winterbottom sells them very cheaply, on condition that they get a good home and Mr. Winterbottom can use them for breeding at any time.”

The Deal For the Major

“It’s a cheap way to keep a breeding dog,” I agreed. “Is the dog any good?”

“Ah,” said Jimmie. “Is he any good? Mr. Winterbottom says he has won over $500 little side-bets on Saturday afternoons out in Peel County already. He just hates to let him go, but, there, it’s a matter of space. Two new imported dogs are expected next week, and he must find room.”

“How much does he want?” I asked.

“Twenty dollars²,” laughed Jim. “A measly $20 for a dog that cost $300, and has earned $500, besides siring a great many valuable pups.”

“Why don’t you take him?” I asked.

“Have I ever,” demanded Jim, “found a good thing that I didn’t let you in on?”

“Where would we keep him?” I inquired.

“There are two ways we could work this thing out,” said Jim. “I could pay the $20 and you keep him at your place as your share of the deal, or else…”

“I’ll risk $10,” I interrupted. “Then we’ll take turns keeping him. You keep him one month, and I’ll keep him the next. We can toss for who keeps him the first month.”

So Jim and I went up to Mr. Winterbottom’s on Friday and closed the deal for Major Gilbert.

Probably you have seen greyhounds. One at a time, they are an amazing sight, so attenuated, so bellyless, so spindly and spidery of leg, so queerly inhuman of eye, their sloe-eyed expression being expressionless to the eye of anyone familiar with spaniels, hounds and other soulful creatures. A greyhound’s skin is stretched so tight over his extended frame that he has no facial expression left. But to see seven greyhounds, as we saw them at Mr. Winterbottom’s, was a little nightmarish. They seemed to coil and crawl around the kennel enclosure like a box of newly disturbed fishworms.

Major Gilbert, I am happy to say, stood out amongst the others like the drummer in a band. He was incredible. He was arched, curved, immensely chested, legged like a mosquito, and in his expressionless eye smouldered a deep fire.

“I envies you gentlemen,” said Mr. Winterbottom, “so I do.”

We tossed, and Jim won, or lost, as the case maybe. And we took Major Gilbert of Tottlebury home to Jimmie’s garage, where Jim had built a nest of planks and hay for him. We bought a pound of hamburger on the way home and when we got Major Gilbert, or “the Major,” as we sportily agreed to call him, safely bedded, we fed him the hamburger. He took the whole little trough of it in one remarkable gulp, and looked at us with fiercely smouldering eye, for more.

So I drove over and got another little wooden trough of hamburger; two pounds this time.

And when I unwrapped it and set it before the Major, he gulped the two pounds in one unbelievable gulp again and then stood glaring madly at us, tense, tail-arched, waiting for still more.

“Don’t over-feed him,” warned Jim. “We’re coursing him tomorrow.”

“Why,” I exclaimed, “he doesn’t show the slightest sign of having eaten anything. Look at that belly.”

And indeed the Major showed not the least bulge in that constricted and attenuated region where one expects, in most creatures, to find a certain comfort to the eye.

We left the Major still standing with unblinking and kindling eye as we backed out of the garage and shut the door, full of the melting pride of ownership. Saturday, right after a hasty lunch, we took the Major in the car and sped for York, Peel and Halton, it being necessary, in the ancient of coursing, to give a greyhound plenty of room to run in.

“Will we walk until we scuffle up a jack?” I inquired, as we rolled through the autumn side-roads.

“The Major,” said Jim, “likely knows his business. I say, just let’s unleash him and let him go.”

Speeding Like a Shadow

So at a likely pasture, we parked the car, led the Major out into a field. On prancing high legs, with royal arched back and updrawn belly, head erect on swanlike neck and great expressionless eyes fairly fuming, the Major strained on the leash.

Suddenly he froze. He seemed to be filled with a faint tremolo³. A whine, three feet long, exuded from his pointed and lance-like head.

“Let him go,” Jim hissed.

I slipped the leash.

Like a javelin, Major Gilbert of Tottlebury launched himself through space. Touching the ground only as if by accident, with glorious legs rhythmically swinging forward and back beneath him, the Major sped over that meadow like an arrow, like a streak of light, like some prehistoric half-bird, half-reptile. In 20 stupendous curving leaps, the Major crossed the meadow, sailed across a snake fence and had vanished over the horizon.

We waited, breathless.

“I saw no rabbit,” I said.

“It’s funny, hearing no baying,” said Jim. “But greyhounds give no tongue.”

We waited.

Twenty minutes, we watched all sides. For hares run in great circles, and any minute the hare might break madly from any of the four sides of the horizon around us.

“Let’s go up and stand on that slope, by the snake fence,” suggested Jimmie. Which we did. And on arriving at the snake fence, we saw in the field below us a pleasant farmhouse, barns and sheds.

There on the skyline, we sat and scanned the far-spread vista. Field by field, we studied the landscape, watching for some remote lancelike shape speeding like a shadow between the fences.

But no shape appeared. We saw cows. Horses. Slow wagons. But no Major. Below us, we saw the farmer standing in the doorway, looking up at us. His wife came and stood with him. We waved at them. They waved back. Half an hour passed.

“Any time now,” said Jim, eyes glued on distance. “What a whale of a hare that must be.”

We saw the farmer coming up the hill to us.

“Was that your dog,” he asked, “that came over the fence a while back?”

“Yes, it was,” we said happily. “A greyhound.”

“Well, sir I never see anything like it before,” said the farmer.

“Speed?” smiled Jim.

“Speed,” said the farmer. “He came over that fence like a shot out of a gun. My wife had a lemon pie on the window-sill cooling. Straight as an arrow, he went for that pie. Down this hill, over the fence, never pausing to even go around the chicken house. Right over top of it. Straight as a shot from a gun. He grabbed that pie. He took it in one gulp. I never see anything like it.”

“Where did he go?” asked Jim, hollowly.

“He’s up here in that little bush,” said the farmer, pointing to a nearby copse. “At least, that’s where I saw him last.”

We walked over to the copse.

There, coiled up like a watch-spring, was Major Gilbert of Tottlebury, sound asleep, full of lemon pie.

“Gimme,” I muttered, “beagles.”

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. $500 in 1938 would be $6,340 in 2025. ↩︎
2. $20 in 1938 would be $420 in 2025. ↩︎
3. In music, tremolo is a trembling effect. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 9, 1946.

“It’s your duty,” declared Jimmie Frise.

“Awfff!” I scoffed.

“Look,” said Jim. “The meeting isn’t five blocks from where we sit here in your home.”

“Aw, Jim,” I pleaded, “what’s got into you? Who wants to go to a public meeting?”

“It’s a meeting,” advanced Jim, “of the Community Betterment League. Are you not interested in the betterment of your community?”

“Awff,” I protested. “Jim, I’ve had a busy day. Here it is a swell night to just sit in front of the grate fire, listening to those apple wood logs crackling. And you want me to go out and sit in a crowded public hall and listen to a lot of windbags…”

“It won’t be crowded,” said Jim gently. “There’ll only be a handful of people out. The whole district feels the way you do, Greg. They’ll all stay home, like you, and snooze in front of their grate fires.”

“Well, what’s the matter with the community?” I demanded indignantly. “Isn’t it one of the best run communities in the world? Are there better public health services than we’ve got? Better schools? Better street cars? Better pavements?”

“There’s been a lot of crime…” ventured Jim.

“Is there a better police force in the world than we’ve got?” I lashed.

“There’s quite a lot of poverty,” mused Jim. “Off the main traffic avenues, down the side streets where guys like you and me never have to go. …there’s quite a bit of hardship, loneliness, neglect, trouble, distress…”

“Aw, we’ve got the most enlightened social services in the country,” I asserted. “Jim, leave the community alone. Leave the community in the competent hands that so far have given us so little to complain of.”

“Complain of?” murmured Jim. “Then why do you suppose the Community Betterment League has called a meeting tonight in this district? Why have they hired a hall and organized a program of special speakers?”

“My boy,” I explained, “there are some people in this world whose hobby is playing with public meetings the same as some people have a hobby of fishing or collecting old books or doing work with fret saws.”

“You’re,” suddenly sizzled Jimmie, “no citizen!”

“I,” I retorted aghast, “I… look here, Jim! I’ve been in two wars. I’ve always paid my taxes… maybe a little late… I… uh…!”

Jim just leaned back and watched me be astonished.

“A citizen,” he said quietly after a moment, “should take an interest in the affairs of his city. Or his town. Or his township. To be a citizen, it is not enough to be a successful business man. It isn’t enough to be a hard-working man, who obeys all the laws, pays his taxes, keeps his premises clean.”

“What more… ?” I tried to interrupt indignantly.

Not to Be Bandied About

“To be a good citizen,” went on Jim calmly, it isn’t enough to be a successful man. In the newspapers, it says, ‘Prominent Citizen Dies,’ but when you examine the facts, you find that some greedy cunning old guy has devoted his entire life and energies to building up a large business, employing hundreds of people, erecting a magnificent factory, but in his whole life, he never attended a political meeting.”

“Well, heh, heh,” I scoffed. “I should hope not! Imagine a successful business man going and sitting at the ordinary political meeting, with a lot of local wind-bags seizing the opportunity to sound off. Why, a business man would risk his health attending one of those stupid meetings. He might get so angry, sitting listening to all the drivel, that he’d have a heart attack. Maybe a thrombosis….”

“Okay,” said Jim. “Then don’t let him aspire to the title of citizen. Don’t let him imagine he is a citizen. He’s nothing more or less than a prominent business man. And in the newspapers, it should merely say, ‘Prominent Business Man Dies.’ This word citizen is too noble a title to be bandied about.”

“I suppose,” I sneered, “that, you would call those wind-bags who DO take the floor at public meetings, you’d call them citizens, would you?”

“Most certainly,” said Jim. “The least of them, the poorest of them, is a better citizen than the clever, wealthy, successful man who ignores his duty to take his common share of public affairs.”

“Now, look here, Mr. Frise,” I declared, “who do you suppose runs this country? Who do you suppose takes a REAL interest in the public affairs of the country? Is it those insignificant wind-bags you hear spouting at public meetings? Or is it the men of affairs, the men of substance, the business men, yes, the PROMINENT business men, who, behind the scenes, and at caucuses and private meetings, GET THE REAL JOB DONE!”

“Do you insinuate,” asked Jim coolly, “that this country is not run according to democratic principles? Do you suggest that we are not controlled by representative government?”

“Aw, Jim,” I pleaded, “you don’t for one minute suppose that our big, wealthy citizens just sit back and let the country be run by the kind of people who attend public meetings? My dear man, the real government of the country is in the hands of the men smart enough, wealthy enough to get their way in politics the same as they get their way in their own factories or businesses.”

“They get together,” supposed Jim, “in private board rooms? They don’t HAVE to attend public meetings?”

“Exactly,” I pointed out.

“Then,” said Jim smoothly, “you are content to leave the world in the hands of the powerful few? The same powerful few who lately put the whole world, and all its humble, teeming millions, through the most savage torture in all recorded history? You are content…”

“Hold on,” I protested. “We went to war as a whole people. We weren’t driven into it. It was by overwhelming public consent that we decided we couldn’t come under the dominion of Hitler…”

“And I suppose,” posed Jim, “that it was by overwhelming popular consent that we allowed Hitler to rise to power? Those few, those crafty few, that band of brothers whom we left to run our world for us, weren’t responsible for the rise of Hitler, eh?”

“We had nothing to do with that,” I stated flatly. “The thing just grew. It grew without us noticing it. We were busy with our own private affairs, all through 1939, 1936, 1938…”

“Yeah, and leaving the world to our betters, to the gentlemen in the board rooms,” struck Jimmie. “Do you remember 1938? Do you not recollect there were little meetings, little ill- attended meeting all over this country, all over every country, trying to rouse us to what was coming? Don’t you remember that?”

“I… uh,” I argued.

“No, you don’t remember,” accused Jim. “Because you were too busy sitting at home before the grate fire, listening to the apple wood logs crackling.”

“I… uh,” I pointed out.

“It won’t do,” cried Jimmie, suddenly standing up. “The world right now is in too perilous a state for anybody to stay at home.”

“But what has a meeting of the Community Betterment League,” I groaned, “got to do with the state of the world?”

“Maybe very little,” agreed Jim, “but it’s a public meeting. And by golly, we’re going! In fact, we’re going to ALL public meetings from now on.”

I just sat there. Imagine going to ALL public meetings!

A Lesson Learned

“If the past 20 years has taught us, the common people of the world, one lesson,” went on Jim loudly, “it is that we can’t trust the world in the hands of self-appointed leaders. We’ve got self-appointed leaders in this country just the way Germany had with Hitler. Rich guys, ambitious guys, smooth, get-together guys! Maybe they don’t use gangster organizations on us – yet! But unless we’re a lot more stupid than I think, unless we are really as stupid as these self-appointed guys think, we’re going to protect ourselves from them, we’re going to start taking an interest in our own LIVES…

“Aw, Jim,” I sighed, “there’s a lethargy in the common man.”

“Not lethargy,” corrected Jim. “Inertia. That’s different. A lot different. With inertia, all you’ve got to do is start it moving!”

“Inertia,” I pondered. “I don’t know, Jim. If you put together all the reasons people don’t go out to public meetings, they’d add up to something more than mere inertia. They don’t want the even tenor of their ways upset. They want to go to the movie. They want to sit at home. They want to go out and call on friends. Or they want to have friends in. All the reasons are little reasons. But they add up.”

“Yeh, they add up,” said Jimmie. “We are like on a ship. We’ve all retired to the comfort of our cabins. The ship plunges through the night. We are at the mercy of the captain and the crew.”

“Okay,” I submitted, “but at least, on a ship, the captain and the crew are selected and appointed according to laws and rules so strict and severe that there is little chance of them running us on the rocks. We don’t let the guy who just WANTS to be captain run the ship.”

“Aw,” smiled Jim, “then you will come to the meeting?”

“I’ll,” I said grudgingly, “come to the meeting.”

And we put on our coats and hats, it being just a little before 8 p.m., to walk the five blocks over to the public hall where the meeting was being held.

It was a fine, crisp night. And we enjoyed the walk. About three blocks down, we noticed that Rusty, Jim’s so-called Irish water spaniel, was with us. It isn’t Irish, and it hates water. But it loves masculine company, especially at night, in the open air, when something seems afoot.

“Hey, go on home, you,” I commanded.

“Aw, he can sit outside the hall,” objected Jim. “He’ll be all right.”

“Dogs aren’t invited to public meetings, Jim,” I protested.

“He’ll go back home when we go in the hall,” assured Jim.

And at the corner, just as Rusty rounded a hedge, there was a sudden scuffle, and a large Nazi dog, a large totalitarian, Fascist dog that had apparently been lying in wait behind the hedge, pounced out on Rusty and you never heard such a riot on a quiet residential street.

The dog’s owner came around the corner – he may have been on his way to the meeting too, for all I know – and taking a hasty glance to see whether his dog was on top or underneath, shouted out, “Hey, Bonzo, not so rough!”

He was a big, burly guy, like his dog.

But Jim and I were both running full tilt, for Rusty was decidedly the under dog.

“Rough!” I yelled, as I took a flying kick at the strange mutt. “That hyena?”

I always believe in kicking a dog fight apart. A good swift kick does less harm than another 10 seconds of fighting, I always say.

But I missed. Jim made a grab into the scuffle, and I whirled to come in for another dandy on the ribs of the top dog when the stranger got me by the coat collar and said, in a calm, authoritative voice, “Now, now, my little whiffet….”

I detest the word whiffet. I don’t mind half pint, shorty, or even squirt. But whiffet…!

I lunged.

The big fellow gave me a hearty shake, chuckling very reasonably.

Rules Suspended

Meantime the dog fight was going on with increased fury. Rusty had got in a little nip or two on the top dog’s more delicate anatomy, and its yowls, intermixed with its snarls, and Rusty’s protests of murder, were certainly creating a warlike mood.

Now, when a man much larger than you so far forgets the Marquis of Queensberry rules as to manhandle a smaller man, is the smaller man still bound by the Marquis of Queensberry rules?

I don’t know. I personally think not.

Should I have permitted myself to be held suspended there in space while a dog fight went on, and my friend’s dog, Rusty, was being savagely murdered?

I think not.

So, bracing my feet, I swung my elbow hard and deep into the large man’s exposed bay window. I felt my elbow sink a good foot.

The big fellow, with an astounding intake of breath, let limply go of me and fell smothering to the ground.

At which his dog let go of Rusty and ran yelping up the street into the night.

And out came a number of neighbors from several directions, in their shirt sleeves, to witness Jimmie and me attempting to erect the large stranger off the pavement.

“Who hit him?” demanded the first comers.

“He did,” said Jim briefly, indicating me at the head end of the gentleman still fighting for his wind.

From mouth to mouth the wonder flew, as they all got the large man up on his feet, and all eyes were on me.

“He… uh,” said Jim, to the assembled neighbors, “it was hardly…”

I think he was going to tell them just what I had done to the stranger.

Two of the neighbors led the large man unsteadily up the street.

“Best thing has happened around here for years,” whispered one of the gathering, delightedly pumping my hand. “He and his dog. They go out every night for a walk, looking for a dog fight….”

And everybody pumped my hand. My foul hand. They should have shaken my elbow.

I brushed away from them.

“Jim,” I said, “I’m winded, too upset to go to any meeting.”

“Same here,” said Jim shortly, whistling for Rusty.

And we walked home in silence.

“That was an awful jab you gave that poor guy,” said Jim, at last unable to keep to himself. “You might have burst his appendix.”

“I felt something burst,” I said, not without satisfaction.

“Are you proud of it?” demanded Jim grimly.

“Weeelll…” I said comfortably.

“Gosh,” ruminated Jim bitterly, “there we were, heading for a meeting of the Community Betterment League…..”

“It’s the way I told you, Jim,” I assured, taking his elbow and leading up my sidewalk toward my house and the grate fire of apple wood logs, “something absurd is always preventing a man from attending his public duty. A dog fight… or something.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, August 23, 1947.

“Meet,” cried Jimmie Frise, “High-rigger’s Axman!”

The most beautiful dog I ever saw stood before us in the farmyard.

He was noble. He was a creamy golden color, and was about the size of a good hound, but heavier-built, with a deep chest and powerful legs. His coat was dense and slightly wavy, and of an indescribable tawny hue. He was a Golden Retriever.

“Jim,” I said, “I never saw a nobler expression in a dog’s face.”

“Next to a cocker spaniel,” informed Jim, “the golden retriever, of all dogs, tries hardest to be a human being.”

“Hi, Axman!” I greeted, bending.

And the beautiful creature lowered his head and with heavily wagging tail stepped a couple of paces forward so I could fondle his skull.

Mrs. McGinniss, the farmer, came to her kitchen door and viewed us.

“Did you ever see a more beautiful animal?” she demanded. “You’ll have fun with him the next three days.”

“I can’t see anything we can do for him,” I replied. “He looks to be in the very peak of condition.”

“Just his runs over the fields,” said Mrs. McGinniss.

Our friend, Horace Parkhouse, who owns High-rigger’s Axman, had to go to Minneapolis on urgent business there on the very eve of the Canadian National Exhibition dog show. All summer, he has been grooming and exercising and conditioning Axman for the big show -the first after all the years of war.

And at the psychological moment, the very last week before the Ex opens, he had, in the interests of finance, to run away off to Minneapolis.

So he had asked Jimmie and me to go out to Mrs. McGinniss’s farm, where Axman is boarded, for the three days he had to be away, and give the beautiful dog our personal and loving care.

Runs over the fields. Brushings night and morning. Daily routines of making Axman stand steady and cool, while we pretended we were showing him in the ring before the multitudes of the dog show.

“The fact that we’re strangers to him,” explained Jimmie, kneeling down beside Axman and setting his feet just so, to reveal his fine build, “is all the better. Because it will accustom him to all the strangers he’s going to meet next week…”

Axman, who had already been thoroughly schooled since puppyhood to take up this show-ring stance when requested, stood before us in all his beauty: head up, ears alert, front legs set straight, and hind-legs stretched I well back to show the fine slope of his back.

“He’s a winner!” declared Jim.

“Come to lunch!” called Mrs. McGinniss from the kitchen door.

With alacrity, Jimmie and I wheeled and made for the kitchen door, for, in the little while we had been in the McGinniss door-yard, the most ravishing odors had been wafting out to us.

“We eat,” explained Mrs. McGinniss, “right here in in the kitchen, the old-fashioned way….”

It was old-fashioned, all right. I have never seen a farm table more abundantly burdened than the one standing before us.

In the city, there is an affected fashion of putting one course at a time on the table. But in the country, the whole business is set on the table so that a man has a fair idea of what is ahead of him. A man can pause, reverently, for a minute, before seating himself at a farm table, and take a quick survey of the whole situation. And plot his course.

In front of Mrs. McGinnis, was a large tureen of vegetable soup. To one side, a platter heaped with golden scrambled eggs, with a sort of ruching or frill of bacon all round.

On the other side, a bowl of what are properly called home-fried potatoes. These are not the battered and mushy things that go by the name of home-fried potatoes in cities. Mrs. McGinniss had sliced good large potatoes in whole, sound slices of a reasonable thickness. And they were fried dark brown on one side only. There is the secret: one side of each good wholesome slice a crisp dark brown: the other side creamy from the butter in which it was fried.

Now, there was also cole slaw and a side dish of stewed corn by each plate. And sundry scattered saucers of large snappy radishes and old-fashioned tangy leaf lettuce. But what caught and held the eye of the speculator on beholding Mrs. McGinniss’s table was a sort of fortress, or turreted and battlemented tower, in the midst of the table, consisting of pies, warm in their original pie plates; low dishes of preserved peaches in the foreground, tall dishes of preserved cherries of extraordinary rich color in the background. And, as a sort of core or heart of the architectural design, a chocolate cake about fourteen inches in diameter and four inches in thickness, from which the deep, rich coiling dark icing seemed ready to drip; but just didn’t.

“Aaaaahhhh!” said Jimmie, for want of something better to say as he sidled into his chair.

High-rigger’s Axman, who had come in the door with us, sat down midway between Jim and me and thumped the floor heartily with his tail. I looked at him pityingly, for his mouth was open, and his noble eyes were filled with a dreamy look, and he appeared to be smiling….

“None of this for you, boy!” I consoled. “You’re in training…”

And Mrs. McGinniss handed me the soup.

For my sake, as well as the reader’s, I must not dwell on that meal. Mrs. McGinniss coached us hurriedly through the soup, scrambled eggs, bacon, home-fried potatoes and so forth.

“Save some space,” she cautioned, “I want you to taste these pies…”

Taste! In city restaurants, they have discovered a way of cutting a pie into seven. Anybody with a little practise, can cut a pie into six. But Mrs. McGinniss was poor at mathematics. She just cut her pies into four.

First on the program was green apple pie.

“It’s not so filling,” explained Mrs. McGinniss. “I want you to compare it with the combined cherry and gooseberry…”

From out that central fortress or tower in the centre of the table, she drew forth, after the combined cherry-gooseberry pie had been voted the equal of the green apple, a pumpkin pie.

“Preserved pumpkin,” apologized Mrs. McGinniss. “But my own recipe…”

We each had a quarter. Then after a large wedge of chocolate cake, to top off, Mrs. McGinniss prevailed upon us to sample a little plum conserve she was very proud of, buttered on a small tea biscuit; and to test its tang as compared with some rhubarb marmalade she was equally partial to, a little dab of it on another tea biscuit…

Poor old High-rigger’s Axman had, long before the scrambled eggs were gone, given up all hope and had laid down, his beautiful head across his forepaws. About the time I sighed down the last morsel of tea biscuit with rhubarb marmalade, he raised his eyes reproachfully from under his noble brow, smacked and readjusted his lips comfortably, and closed his eyes as though in pain.

“Jim,” I asked, shoving the table away, “how about the dog…?”

“We’ll take him for a run…” agreed Jim.

Outside the kitchen door, under the porch roof, was a weatherbeaten old sofa. I got to it first, and sat on it.

“Now, now,” protested Jim, “don’t let’s forget Horace…

And I thought, guiltily, of poor old Horace Parkhouse away off there in Minneapolis, trying to attend to finance while his heart was back here with Axman and the big Canadian National Exhibition show in which he had high hopes for Axman.

“Jim,” I suggested, “you take Axman this afternoon and I’ll take him after supper…. eh?”

But Jim declined on the ground that we were equally uncomfortable from food, and equally responsible, in our promises to Horace, for Axman getting his exercise under our watchful eyes over the fields.

So I heaved myself off the sofa and, after bidding Mrs. McGinniss adieu for an hour, we headed down the lane past the barn and out over the pasture.

Axman was beautiful to behold in action. He ranged eagerly along the fences, into every covert and through each weed patch, with the tireless air of the hunting dog.

“He’ll win something,” I huffed, as we climbed the slope. “Maybe best in show, eh?”

He’s got tough competition, don’t forget,” said Jim, breathless. “This is the first Canadian National Exhibition in six long years. The dog breeders have been busy all through the war, despite everything. They’ve had a breathing space to weed out and choose only the best of their fancy. This will probably be the greatest dog show in the history of the CNE.”

“Wouldn’t it be something,” I gloated, “if Horace were to take best in show with Axman?”

“And we,” added Jim, “could feel some share of the glory, even if only three days of this…”

“It’s the last few days,” I pointed out, “that puts the final show finish on a dog.”

At which moment we came to a grassy knoll, with sumach bushes, where, as if by common assent, we both sat down for a moment.

“We can watch him from here,” sighed Jim.

And while Axman explored and exercised far and wide, Jimmie and I talked about the dog show, and the CNE which had been suspended for six years after its long and famous history, so that the troops could use its great buildings and park for training. And I lay back to rest my torso…

The sun was setting when I waked. And there was Jim sprawled out beside me.

And Axman nowhere to be seen!

“Hey, Jim!”

We found Axman comfortably asleep on the sofa under the porch roof by the kitchen door. And Mrs. McGinniss in the throes of preparing supper.

Supper? Well: there were pies again; new ones. And tea biscuits and various assorted jams, jellies, conserves; and a new cake, this time a maple walnut cake, with icing the color of Axman’s golden coat.

Mrs. McGinniss egged us on and watched our every bite.

“Now, how does that cake compare,” she demanded, “with the chocolate cake we had for lunch?”

And we confessed that maybe it had a slight edge. “That raspberry jelly; now?” she queried, thrusting the jar under our noses. “Take a bit of that cottage cheese and a dab of the raspberry jelly…”

So that it was full dark by the time we withdrew from the kitchen table. And too late to take Axman for any romp in the night, when he might get lost or tangled in a wire fence.

“We’ll take him,” yawned Jim, as we prepared for bed up in Mrs. McGinniss’s spare room under the sloping gables, “for a good sharp run before breakfast. Let’s get up at six.”

And as we pulled the covers over, we could hear busy sounds from below, in the kitchen.

“Do you know,” said Jim sleepily but with wonder, “I believe that woman is at the oven again!”

Well, it was a quarter to eight before we waked. And when we got down to breakfast, Mrs. McGinniss had a johnny cake and maple syrup, tea biscuits and still another serried array of jars of new and fresh jellies and conserves, preserves and marmalades.

And though she had finished her breakfast long ago, she sat with us at the table, and watched our every bite, and questioned us close and narrow on the merits of the preserved melon over the acid tang of the thimbleberry jelly; or the aroma of the spiced peach jam over the grape conserve.

So that after breakfast, we took Axman down the road a few hundred yards, until our fears of him being hit by a passing motor car – although there were none – caused us to take him back to the farm. By which time, lunch was in preparation.

We arrived here at Mrs. McGinniss’s on Thursday, before noon. It is now Saturday afternoon. And Horace Parkhouse arrives back here tonight from Minneapolis.

We have combed and brushed Axman both night and morning. We have, to the best of our ability, given him several runs over the meadows and pastures. But Axman has decidedly put on weight since Thursday. You can see it. It is obvious.

We also had a very unfortunate experience.

We caught Mrs. McGinniss giving Axman a large hunk of chocolate cake.

And when I inspected his feeding pan, I discovered traces of what could not be anything else but the loganberry pie which we had had for lunch a little time before.

“Mrs. McGinniss,” I accused hollowly, “do you mean to say you have been feeding Axman pastry… and… and… CAKE!”

Aw, I can’t see it go to waste…” protested the dear old lady.

“But… but Mrs. McGinniss!” cried Jimmie, “You seem to have gone crazy over cooking! Surely you don’t cook like this all the time…”

“No indeed,” said Mrs. McGinniss. “But it’s six years now since I showed any pies, cakes, jellies and preserves in the Exhibition. And I have been just testing out my recipes so as to pick the sure fire winners…”

“Testing them on us!” I ejaculated. “And on Axman…!”

“You’ll all thrive,” scoffed Mrs. McGinniss joyously.

Horace will be here in a few minutes. He telephoned from the village. But before he gets here, may I suggest that if you go to the Canadian National Exhibition dog show and see a particularly well-fed Golden Retriever with a dreamy expression in his eyes, that will be Axman.

And DO go and see the women’s home cooking exhibits. Look for Mrs. McGinniss’s entries.

They will explain all.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 1, 1933.

“There are some things,” said Jimmie Frise, “I can hardly believe.”

“There’s lots like you,” I admitted.

“Now this item,” said Jim, “about the man in Jersey City who claims his dog is a radio receiving set.”

“It’s not long,” said I, “since people wouldn’t believe that even a receiving set was a receiving set. I remember the time The Star put on the first demonstration of radio, and crowds attended a great public meeting to hear radio transmitted ten city blocks.”

“But this guy,” said Jimmie, “his name is Frank G. Kerk. His address is given, too. He lives at 20 Linden Ave., Jersey City. One day he had trouble with his aerial. And he was up fixing it. He had his dog up with him. A Great Dane, named Frederick the Great.”

“A sort of consul model radio,” I said.

“Well, the aerial happened to get in Frederick’s way,” went on Jimmie, “and it touched his collar, which had a lot of metal on it. The dog instantly stiffened. Its hair stood on end. And a far-away look came into its eyes.”

“Maybe the radio was playing ‘Trees’,” I suggested.

“So,” said Jim, “Mr. Kerk, who is an alert man, left the dog standing there in that frozen attitude and got a pair of earphones. He attached the aerial to the dog’s tail and plugged the earphones in on the dog’s collar. And to his astonishment, he heard Amos ‘n’ Andy!”

“I can hear Amos ‘n’ Andy without any attachments at all,” I said. “I can hear it now.”

“To prove it,” said Jimmie, “Mr. Kerk stayed, tuned in, and he heard a whole sequence of programs.”

“I supposed he dialed around by twisting the dog’s tail?” I suggested.

“You don’t seem to realize what this means,” said Jim, a little pettishly. “Can’t you see what a wonderful thing it will be if we can go fishing and take Rusty along, hook piece of wire on his tail and a pair of earphones on to him, and there we sit, fishing to the latest music.”

Rusty is Jimmie’s Irish water spaniel.

“I thought you said you could scarcely believe it?” I said.

“I don’t, but I am going to experiment at once,” said Jim. “This discovery may ruin the radio industry, but it will create a tremendous boom in the dog market. The lonely Eskimo listening in on his husky. The lonely spinster tuned in on her poodle.”

“And the dog shows,” I put in. “Think of the annual dog show, with crowds going along admiring the tone of the different breeds.”

“Every tramp in the country,” said Jim, “with his radio trotting happily along at his heels.”

“It’s a great thing if it’s true,” I said.

“Sure, it’s true,” cried Jim. “This man Kerk demonstrated it before thousands. Engineers and scientists and everybody. From the time of his discovery, poor old Frederick the Great led a dog’s life. Every time there was company, and when the news spread there was plenty of company, the poor old hound was dragged out, plugged in and used for a radio. Can’t you imagine Aunt Emily, at 63, down on the floor with a set of earphones attached to the dog, twisting his tail in an effort to get Rudy Vallee! The only trouble was that every time Frederick would sit down to have a nice comfortable canine scratch, the air was filled with static.

“Kerk,” said Jimmie, “who was an amateur electrical experimenter, having succeeded in getting the dog wired for sound, then turned his attention to human beings. He began to experiment with himself and others, and before long he had himself rigged up so that he could listen to a radio program from, or through, himself. He rigged up an aerial grounded to a lightning arrestor, and brought the waves through a wire which he connected to a tuning coil in his bedroom. Lying on the bed, he found that he could hold a small coil of copper wire in his hand, to which the earphones were attached, and immediately hear a radio program.”

“Everything is getting cheaper,” I said. “But I went through that experimenting stage ten years ago. I’m not going to go fiddling with wires and coils any more. Let the professors do it and then I’ll buy one for a quarter.”

“In Long Island,” said Jimmy, reading from a clipping, “there is a chimney in a house which gives out the programs whenever the station is in operation, while at another home there is a tea kettle, which, when heated to a certain temperature, sings, not in the good old-fashioned tea kettle style, but the latest jazz and vo-do-de-o-do.”

“But about that dog,” I said. “I should think dogs had done enough for man without us dragging them into this modern age of mechanical miracles.”

“The dog,” said Jim, “has got to compete in this modern age, or be left behind. I say it is a great thing for dogs, this discovery. It brings the dog in tune with the times.”

“I can’t see old Rusty running around with an aerial sticking up from his tail,” I said. “Emitting music. It stands to reason that different kinds of dogs will be tuned in on different wave-lengths. What a din with all the dogs in the neighborhood! A wire-haired terrier on CFCA. A Russian wolf hound on a New York station with a soprano squealing along the street. A police dog with one of those detective thrillers!”

Anyway, Jimmie called me after supper to come over while he wired up Rusty.

Rusty is one of those dogs. You know. A hunting breed born to have adventures with a man in the wilds. And imprisoned for the period of his natural life in a city. He has a lot of excess energy which he has never had much opportunity to employ.

Jim had two earphone sets and a coil of aerial wire which we attached to the aerial on Jim’s house. The head-phones we wired to Rusty’s collar the way you fix the electric iron when it wears out. Pare a lot of little copper wires and wrap them around a knob.

We got Rusty to stay still by Jim lying on top of him while I wound the wire around his tail. Then we put his collar on and adjusted the head-phones.

“I hope it’s a good program,” said Jimmie, excitedly.

We listened.

All was silence.

Rusty wagged his tail and yawned.

Neither was transmitted.

“Maybe the connections aren’t perfect,” said Jim, but you could see he was deeply disappointed.

“Maybe Rusty’s hair is too curly,” I said. We tinkered with the wires, re-attached the aerial, the head-phone wires, but nothing was to be heard. Just the deaf feel of head-phones.

“I think,” said Jim, “we ought to plug it into the electric light socket. Let’s go inside and I’ll get the cord for the electric iron.”

He was preparing to rig the cord to Rusty’s collar when the bare end of the wire came in contact with the strings of my headset which, fortunately, I had laid on the floor. There was a flash, Jim and I leaped back, and Rusty let out a wild yell and dashed for the door.

Letting out a whoop at every jump, and with head-phones yanked from our heads, dangling, and half of Jim’s aerial trailing, he headed out the door, down the steps and up the street.

Jim and I followed. It is a respectable neighborhood. Very few people are ever to be seen in it. Nobody ever sits on their front steps. Nevertheless, one elderly lady, with a good deal of gimp in her yet, it seems, was out observing her flowers growing, and as Rusty went tearing past howling, with Jim and me in hot pursuit, this tall and elderly lady let out a hoarse yell and joined in the chase.

“Murder!” she shouted. “Thieves!”

A uniformed chauffeur and two boys on bicycles joined.

“Police!” roared this tall, long-legged lady of one of our choicest residential districts. I think she was of English descent, of the sporting aristocracy or something.

Half a dozen men, boys and a few swift-footed girls joined. Poor old Rusty was half a block ahead, with his head turned to look back reproachfully at us.

It was a hopeless chase. We weakened. The tall, elderly lady caught up to us first. “You brutes!” she said. “Tying cans to a dog’s tail. A boy’s trick. At your age.”

“It’s my dog,” stated Jimmie.

“I’ll see you jailed for this,” said the tall lady fiercely. “I am acquainted with two magistrates.”

The rest of the crowd joined us.

“Lady,” said Jim, “we were simply conducting a scientific experiment.”

“Vivisectionists!” sneered the lady.

The crowd growled their sympathy.

“Why, that’s my dear old hunting dog,” cried Jimmie. “My old Rusty. I wouldn’t hurt him for the world.”

“Indeed,” said the tall lady, with far more feeling than if she had said “Oh yeah.” Try it some time.

We tried to walk off.

“Someone call the police,” said the lady, menacingly.

We heard Rusty going down the next street, so, having our second wind, Jim and I made a break and went down a side drive, vaulted a wire fence and intercepted Rusty by stepping on the aerial which brought him up with a final yelp.

We whipped off the wires, head-phones and aerial. We hid them under our coats. And we scrammed, as they say. With Rusty coming joyously with us once more.

By a roundabout route, we got to my place and hid in the cellar until it was dark.

“You know,” I said to Jim, “that tall, emotional lady was right, though she didn’t know why.”

“I suppose,” said Jim, taking fistfuls of Rusty’s loose hide and hauling it the way good men do with good dogs.

“I mean, what is the good of experiments?” I said. “What the world needs is more dogs and less excitement. It needs a lot more people just sitting doing nothing with a dog.”

“I guess so,” said Jim.

“We’ve got enough,” I concluded. “A man and a dog. Just sitting down anywhere. That’s enough, isn’t it? No music. No speeches or detective dramas. No experiments. No eagerness. No curiosity. No seeking.”

“Just peace,” said Jim.

“Just peace,” said I.

And when it was dark, we went out with Rusty into the garden and sat on barroom chairs where a bed of verbenas lets go a sweety, musty scent in the night.

---

Editor’s Notes: This is one of the earliest stories, so it is shorter and not does not follow their usual format.

“Trees” is likely the song by Eddie Harkness and His Orchestra from 1928.

Amos ‘n’ Andy was a very popular radio program from the United States that aired from 1928 to 1960. It is more known now for racist stereotyping.

Rudy Vallée is considered one of the first “crooners” and popular stars on the radio, thanks to the introduction of the microphone in the mid-1920s which resulted in more natural singing.

“Vo-do-de-o-do” was a meaningless refrain appearing in popular jazz songs of the 1920s and 1930s.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, November 22, 1947.

“Never,” counselled Jimmie Frise, “go to a dog show at night.”

“Well, it’s the only convenient time,” I submitted.

“We’ll be trampled to death,” declared Jim. “Let’s go in the morning, or even in the afternoon. The judging goes on from 10 am to 10 pm. We can find out what time the retrievers are being judged.”

“Or the hounds,” I checked. “Especially the beagles, the dear little beagles.”

“The last time we went to the Winter Fair dog show,” recollected Jim, “we had sore feet for weeks. We got trampled, stamped on, butted, biffed, shoved, dug in the ribs…”

“Jim,” I announced, “I regard that tremendous crowd at the dog show as only fitting. I think it is the proper and just tribute of human beings to the oldest and noblest companion of humanity across thousands and thousands of years.”

“But my feet …” complained Jimmie.

“Personally,” I pursued, “I prefer to get caught in the jam at a dog show. I prefer to go at night, when all the crowds are there, so as to be a part of this annual celebration in the honor of the dog. Do you realize that it is just possible that there would be NO human race if it hadn’t been for the dog?”

“How do you make that out?” demanded Jim in surprise.

“Before the introduction of agriculture,” I informed him, “what little wandering bands of human beings there were, scattered sparsely over the earth, had to live on what they could find in the perilous and monster-filled wilderness. They had to be warned of the approach of tigers and other savage creatures. They had to hunt game, their only meat. In both those profoundly important factors in the survival of these poor, trembling human beings, the dog played an immense – in fact, an absolutely essential – part.”

“Big dogs?” inquired Jim.

“Big dogs and little dogs,” I assured him. “The astonishing thing about dogs is that, either big or small, they are to be found, in the most ancient times, all over the world – Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America – everywhere but in a few Pacific islands. And wherever they were, big or small, they were the companions, the helpers, the guardians and warners of men!”

“Well, by golly….!” exclaimed Jim.

“Yes, SIR!” I warmed up. “The first actual historical record of dogs goes back to carvings and paintings of ancient Egypt, on the tomb of King Amten, in the year 4000 BC. Hunting dogs, hounds.”

“You mean,” calculated Jim, “6,000 years ago?”

“And that,” I assured him, “is only yesterday in the history of the dog. Because in the most ancient diggings in the cave men era, in all parts of the world, we find the bones of dogs mixed with the bones of men.”

“You mean,” said Jim, “that back in the days before there was any possible communication between the human tribes, say, in Europe and China, or Africa and North America, men and dogs had already got together?”

“Exactly,” I insisted, “There has been a mutual affinity between men and dogs all over the earth and from the very beginning of time. In South America, they were little dogs. In Asia they were mastiffs, giants. But they all helped man hunt, they all warned man of his monstrous wild enemies, they all shared man’s bed and board.”

“Well, this explains,” suggested Jim, “all the various and wholly different breeds of dog; yet all dogs?”

“A little Mexican chihuahua,” I recollected, “can weigh one pound. A mastiff can weigh 175 pounds. But they are both dogs, and definitely related.”

“We don’t see many mastiffs nowadays,” reflected Jimmie,

“That’s a funny thing,” I admitted. “Because we owe the very word ‘dog’ to the mastiff. When the Norman conquerors invaded Britain, they found the country full of giant mastiffs. These were the popular dogs in Britain. Every little baron, every knight, had a house full of them. Every farmer owned a couple. They were called tie-dogs. That is, tied up by day; loose by night.”

“Brrrr,” shivered Jim.

“The Norman French word for ‘mastiff’,” I explained, “was ‘dogue,’ It still is the French word for mastiff. And we poor dopey British, as so often happened to us whenever we were conquered by the Romans or the Vikings or the Saxons and so forth, had a foreign word shoved down our throats. The word ‘dogue,’ which meant ‘mastiff’ to our new bosses, came at last to mean ‘dog,’ meaning any little peewee.”

“Man, I hate to think of those early days,” murmured Jim, “when they had all those mastiffs turned loose every night.”

“Oh, the mastiff was a good many thousand years here before the Normans landed in England,” I advised. “The Romans found him in Britain, also the giant Irish wolfhound. They took ’em home and fed Christians to them in the Colosseum. The ancient kings of Persia had mastiffs. It’s only in quite recent times that men have gone in for the smaller dogs.”

“Thank heavens,” said Jim.

So, with our heaviest boots on, we went to the dog show, in the evening after all. In honor of the dog.

And just as Jimmie had predicted, it was a jam. You see, at the dog show, they have long aisles of small benches on which the show dogs recline. And the public wanders up and down these aisles, viewing the various and beautiful creatures. It could not be any other way. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. But a dog show is capable of traffic jams beyond the wildest dreams of Piccadilly or St. James street and McGill. Certain of the aisles are occupied, say, by one particularly popular breed, like the cocker spaniels. And naturally, everybody pushing along is looking for the cockers. And everybody who is already in the cocker aisle is holding firm. It takes quite a little time to look at a cocker spaniel.

Then, of course, there are the social gatherings. Mrs. Gotrox, who raises Pekingese, is sitting right on the bench, in sporty outdoorswoman costume, among her darlings. And what more natural than that all Mrs. Gotrox’s social friends, with numbers of others who merely like to bask in the obviously social atmosphere surrounding Mrs. Gotrox, should form a traffic jam in front of the Pekingese which is impossible from either direction?

But it is all very fine-tempered and smiling. People who come to look at dogs are a special breed of people. They are probably the old-fashioned kind, the ones not entirely dehumanized by civilization. They have inherited from the long past some memory of the dog that was not a friend merely, but an ally against the encircling darkness. At a dog show, you find yourself looking into the eyes of crowds of people who might easily be your brothers or sisters.

Jimmie wanted to turn left and start with the terriers. I wanted to turn right and start with the Great Danes. Either way, we would be going against the traffic. At dog shows, traffic moves in all possible directions.

“Gosh, what stallions!” gasped Jimmie, as we came in front of the Great Dane exhibit. There were 20 or 30 of them, fawn, black, brindled and harlequin – incredibly striped and blotched in black and white. Their giant jaws agape, their tiny ears pricked up, their stern gaze staring into the multitude looking for one, ONE friend.

So we edged along, passing the chows, the toys, funny balls of knitting called Pekes and Italian greyhounds so tiny and so slender that you might think the Italians got the idea of spaghetti from looking at their diminutive little greyhounds.

We came at length to the dogs Jim was looking for: the retrievers, especially the golden retrievers; although Jimmie isn’t finicky. He will look at any dog so long as it is a retriever – a Labrador, a curly-coated, flat-coated, a Chesapeake Bay. So long as it is half the size of a moose, with a coat like a duck, and with dark wise eyes that suggest it would know exactly what to do both before and after a gun barks.

Now, my fancy is hounds; and the smaller the better. Thirteen-inch beagles, for instance.

But before we got to the hounds and after Jimmie had created a half-hour traffic jam around the retrievers, with his duck-talk to them and his measuring of

But before we got to the hounds and after Jimmie had created a half-hour traffic jam around the retrievers, with his duck-talk to them and his measuring of them at the shoulder and the loin, and his picking the bored creatures up to guess their weight, and stroking their otter-like ears that lie so snug and waterproof against their heads, we had to fight our way into and through a traffic jam in front of the English bulldogs.

And the cause of this particular jam was one particular bulldog. He had the most sinister face I have ever seen, including the great Lon Chaney AND Boris Karloff. He was white, with brindle markings. He weighed well over 40 pounds. His massive brow was not only wrinkled, it twitched into new wrinkles every time he blinked his eyes, which were terrible. And under his mushed snout there protruded two white fangs, upward, bared and ready.

The traffic jam stood respectfully well back from his bench. Because, on the back of the partition of the bench was tacked this sign:

DANGEROUS

DO NOT HANDLE!

“WHAT a brute!” breathed Jimmie.

“He’s beautiful,” I stated.

And the brute looked up at me, from his squat stance, with a sudden, alert expression.

“Bee-yeautiful!’ I repeated rather cautiously,

And the brute chopped his terrible toad jaws at me in a fiendish grin, waggled his broken twisted tail ecstatically and wriggled his massive, bowlegged body into a regular fandango of friendliness.

“By golly,” gasped Jim, “he likes you!”

And a little murmur of applause rose from the silent traffic jam all around.

“Hi, Beautiful!” I said carefully.

The brute leaned out of his bench and strained on the heavy chain that held him.

“Don’t get fresh with that baby,” warned a voice behind me. “He’s a bad actor!”

I glanced to see a tall, raw-boned character in the crowd who had a know-it-all air about him.

“I know something about bulldogs,” he said wisely. “That one is a killer, A BAD dog!”

But the brute was now shimmying in a monstrous and grotesque fashion, straining on his chain in my direction, his eyes wide with friendliness and his terrific pie plate of a mouth in a wide gape of chumminess.

“Careful!” muttered Jim.

But I took a chance. I put my hand out on his head. I slid it firmly down his neck and scratched.

The bulldog snuggled right up to my thigh. And he sat down with a sort of a dump and emitted a great sigh of joy.

“He’s a fool!” said the character in the crowd.

But the traffic jam was entirely charmed by the spectacle and their murmurs rose to little cheers of delight. I sat down beside the brute on the bench and put my arm heartily around him. He fairly pushed me over, he was so happy. He licked my face and panted with brotherly love.

The crowd closed in nearer.

I noted that the chain which held the brute was I caught under his hind leg. I tried to hoist him free of it, but he just snuggled tighter to me. I took the snap off the chain and undid it from his collar to pass the chain under him —

With bound, the massive bulldog leaped free and down into the crowd among their fast-moving legs …

The character, who had been so loud in warning me, let go in a stentorian voice:

“Look out! Bad dog loose!”

There was an instant’s hush and then a riot.

“Mad dog! Mad dog loose!” came the yells and squeals from every direction.

And you never saw a traffic jam melt so fast in your life. Not only in our particular vicinity, but in all the adjoining aisles. Out on the main exit, &a veritable stampede.

But above the tumult, I could hear one voice scolding.

And down our aisle came a man in a white sweater, lugging the brute by the collar. He hoisted him summarily into his place on the bench.

“How’d he get loose?” he demanded, seeing I was sitting on the bench.

“I’m sorry,” I confessed. “His chain was caught under him. I unsnapped it for an instant …”

“Didn’t you see that sign?” demanded the handler grimly. “Dangerous! Do not handle!”

By now the crowds were coming sheepishly back.

“That dog isn’t dangerous,” I scoffed, “The friendliest…”

“The friendliest dog in this here whole show, bar none!” said the handler to me in a low voice. “I just put that sign up to make people keep their dirty hands off him. They carry infection from one dog to another.”

“He’s a beauty,” I agreed.

“That’s his name: Beautiful,” revealed the handler. “That’s what we call him – Beautiful.”

“Ah, that explains it,” I said.

And I went ahead through the much-thinned crowd, and joined Jimmie at the beagles.

---

Editor’s Notes: McGill and St. James would be a busy intersection at the time in Montreal (and would be used as a reference since this was published in the Montreal Standard). Though English speakers would call it St. James, it is officially Rue Saint Jacques.

Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff were well known horror actors, playing the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Frankenstein’s monster respectfully.

Brindle markings is a coat pattern that is described as tiger-striped, though the variations of color are more subtle and blended than distinct stripes.

A stentorian voice is very loud and strong.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, August 29, 1942.

“Now I’ve got squirrel trouble,” announced Jimmie Frise indignantly.

“Chewed into your attic?” I sympathized.

“No,” said Jim. “It’s complicated. This squirrel has a feud on with my Irish water spaniel, Rusty. For about two hours every morning and two hours every evening, it teases Rusty almost to distraction.”

“Well, that’s not your trouble,” I pointed out. “That’s Rusty’s.”

“No, but the neighbors,” explained Jimmie. “They’re complaining about the row Rusty makes over the squirrel.”

“Okay, keep Rusty in,” I solved.

“You can’t keep a dog in all day,” protested Jim. “And anyway, the darn squirrel doesn’t even come around our place until it sees Rusty out.”

“Well, discipline your dog,” I advised. “Give him a spanking or two and he’ll soon quit bothering with squirrels.”

“Not Rusty,” declared Jim warmly. “This feud has been developing quietly for two or three years. Now it’s the biggest thing in Rusty’s life. It’s the biggest thing he has ever had in his life. He’s scratching at the door to get out the first thing in the morning. He races around the yard, checking over the ground to see if his enemy, the squirrel, has been around yet. Then he gives a couple of defiant barks and sits back to wait.”

“There’s the moment to discipline him,” I explained.

“Aw, you don’t know Rusty,” said Jim. “He’s eight years old. He’s a person now, not a dog. He has his rights and knows them. He knows he can bark if he likes. There is no law against a dog barking. Except to excess.”

“Then what happens?” I inquired.

Then Comes Trouble

“Well there sits Rusty, all on the alert,” described Jim, “and sure enough, in a few minutes, along comes this squirrel on the telephone wires, coming from the south.”

“A black squirrel?” I inquired.

“A mangy, middle-aged dusty sort of black squirrel,” said Jim. “He lives in some oak trees about a block to the south of us. Along the telephone wires he comes, a few feet at a time. And when he sees Rusty crouching and watching for him down at the foot of the apple tree he starts a queer rusty, sucking sort of sound which is squirrel for cursing.”

“You understand squirrel talk?” I asked.

“Then Rusty starts to bark,” said Jim. “He rushes forth barking up at the squirrel, who sits on the telephone wire, looking down at Rusty and emitting those nasty, wheezy sounds baring his teeth.”

“Naturally the neighbors would complain,” I submitted, “if Rusty keeps it up.”

“Keep it up?” cried Jim. “They go for an hour or more. You would think a squirrel had more to do than come and tease a dog.”

“Well, you’d think a dog had more to do than get all bothered by a black squirrel,” I countered.

“Do the neighbors blame the black squirrel for inciting the row?” demanded Jimmie. “Not they. They blame it all on Rusty.”

“Aw, Jim,” I laughed, “don’t be silly. Either train your dog to keep quiet or get rid of the squirrel.”

“I’ve heaved rocks at the squirrel,” confessed Jim, “with only this result: that the squirrel thinks I’m in the game now too. And Rusty regards my actions as legal confirmation of his own attitude.”

“Haven’t you got an air rifle?” I inquired quietly.

“They’re illegal in the city,” said Jim, “and anyway, black squirrels are game and protected by law.”

“Get the hose after it,” I suggested.

“You don’t know black squirrels,” said Jim “They are the hardest animal in the world to snub. The more you disturb them, the more pleased they are. This blame squirrel sits on the telephone wires until he has got Rusty frothing at the mouth. Then he comes a little farther along the wire until he can take a jump on to the apple tree. Rusty regard this tree as sacred to him. It is his altar. His property. In all the world, Rusty makes claim to only one thing, and that’s our apple tree.”

“I can understand a dog,” I admitted.

“Well, sir,” went on Jim, “teetering and crouching on that telephone wire, the squirrel measures the four-foot jump to the nearest branch of the tree. Rusty, in a frenzy of excitement below, and at the same time trying to hold himself in control in the hope that the squirrel will miss the jump, alternates between almost insane rushing back and forth and stopping all of a quiver to watch the leap. It is like us at the circus, when the acrobats are ready to jump. We don’t know whether to look or not to look.”

“So the squirrel jumps?” I egged.

“And then Rusty really goes nuts,” said Jim. “For there is the squirrel up his sacred tree, running around it gaily, as if the tree belonged to him: running up to the topmost branches, darting down the trunk almost to within one jump of Rusty.”

“The poor neighbors,” I reminded.

“Well, after about 15 minutes,” related Jim, “Rusty gets completely exhausted. And he quiets down and goes some little distance from the tree and sits down. He knows the squirrel can’t jump back to the telephone wire. He knows that it has to come down the trunk and make a dash for the fence.”

“Why doesn’t he sit at the foot of the tree and out-wait the squirrel?” I inquired.

“He has tried it hundreds of times,” said Jim, “and the squirrel always wins because somebody comes and calls Rusty to supper.”

“Is there any hope of Rusty catching the squirrel at least?” I inquired. “The law of averages is on his side now.”

“No,” said Jim, “he waits and waits and finally he lies down, with his eyes on the tree. Then the squirrel, tired of the game, starts experimentally coming down the trunk. If Rusty leaps up too soon, he just retreats up the tree and sizzles derision down on Rusty’s head. When Rusty least expects it, the squirrel makes the jump, rushes across the garden, up the fence, back up a telephone pole and on to the wire again, with Rusty one jump behind. And, after a few choice insults, retires south to his own domain.”

Neighbors Complain

“Does this go on every day?” I asked.

“The neighbors have complained to the police,” said Jim, “and the police have given me warning.”

“Did you ask them if you could dispose of the squirrel?” I demanded.

“All they said was, it was illegal to use firearms or air rifles within the city limits,” said Jim.

“They never mentioned catapults?” I pursued.

“By jingo, no!” cried Jim.

“Okay,” I exclaimed exultantly. “Then I’ll help you deal with that squirrel.”

For wrapped spirally around one of my fishing rod cases is an old piece of inner tubes too small to be remembered for the salvage drive, but not too small to be remembered when you want a catapult, after 40 years.

And in Jimmie’s apple tree we found perfect crotch and from an old boot’s tongue we cut the perfect patch. And in a matter of half hour, we had as fine a catapult anybody ever saw.

“I don’t think,” I suggested, “that we should shoot stones. Or any hard objects. There are too many houses and garages around. I never broke a window when I was a boy. I would hate to break a window with a catapult at my age.”

“We are rendering a public service,” declared Jimmie, “in getting rid of this squirrel. Get rid of that beast, and Rusty becomes once more the honest, kindly human being he has always been.”

The apples on Jim’s tree have long since gone back to nature. They are small and runty and woody in texture and sour to taste. Not even the kids eat them. I tried one in the patch of the catapult and let drive with up into the leafy solidity of the apple tree.

“Whee,” said Jim. “Perfect.”

“And if I hit the squirrel,” I added, “with a nice, smooth, round apple, it won’t really injure it. It will just give it a hint.”

Rusty Ready For Battle

Rusty who had been looked in the kitchen until the preparations for battle were complete, came out on the dead run, ran excitedly around the garden smelling the tree and in the fence corners until he was satisfied with whatever report the squirrel had left its recent visits.

Then he stood at the wire gate at the back of the garden and emitted couple of defiant hoarse barks.

“See?” said Jim. “No harm in that.”

So we sat in the garden chairs and Rusty took up a position under the apple tree, watching with lifted muzzle to the south along the telephone wires.

Suddenly Rusty whined.

And in the distance, I could see the squirrel running in short stops and starts, high on the telephone wire, heading our way.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” I confessed.

Rusty crouched in the corner of the garden, his whole body shaking as with an ague. The squirrel arrived overhead, and detecting Rusty hiding below let loose a volley of wheezy, sucking and chattering abuse.

Rusty went berserk. He barked, whirled, leaped, like a dervish, letting loose a veritable clamor of sound.

“Okay,” said Jim, signalling. “Let him have it.”

I stood up and picked a nice, small, smooth apple about the size of a ping-pong ball.

Fitting it snugly in the patch of the catapult, a drew a long stretch.

“Ffffttt,” went the catapult, and the apple sped through the air, passing within about six inches of the swearing black squirrel.

With the greatest of ease, through the distance was nearer seven feet than four from where he was at the time, the squirrel leaped and soared into the apple tree.

“Hey,” came a distant shout in a loud, angry voice. “Hey you.”

“Psssst,” warned Jimmie, signalling me to hide the catapult.

A Visitor Arrives

And up the back gate, in the paved lane, rode our neighbourhood policeman, on a bicycle.

“Have you seen any kids throwing apples?” he demanded, glaring suspiciously at the apples on the ground.

“Kids? Apples?” I requested politely.

“Some kids throwing apples,” announced the cop, angrily, “and one hit me square on the back of the neck.”

“We certainly haven’t seen any kids around here,” said Jimmie.

But Rusty, who now discerned the squirrel in the lower branches of the tree, began to go into hysterics.

“Here, shut up,” cried Jim, leaping for him.

“Ho,” said the cop, “that’s the dog they are complaining of, isn’t it?”

Rusty, with an audience of three, went into a terrific spin. He Frothed. He leaped half way up the trunk. He nearly strangled to death, he barked so hard.

“What’s he got up there?” demanded the policeman, getting off his bike and walking in to look up the tree.

The squirrel, with bared teeth and mouth all puckered up, was giving us a fine going over.

The Catapult!

In my excitement, being unable to push the catapult in my trouser pocket, I had stuffed it down the back of my pants. And before I realized the situation, the cop had seen the weapon and had quietly reached and withdrawn it.

“So?” he said, eyeing me and the catapult.

He reached down and selected a nice shiny apple.

Setting his legs wide apart, he drew a long stretch and let the apple fly up into the tree. It hit the branch on which the squirrel was squatting, directly under the beast, and it burst into a flying explosion of juicy fragments that hissed and ripped amid the leaves all about the squirrel.

With all bravado gone, the squirrel with extraordinary alacrity, leaped unerringly from the topmost branch of the apple tree back on to the telephone wire. So eager was it to get away, it never even had to balance itself when it hit the wire. It kept right on going south until it was out of sight.

“That’s done it,” said Jim, with deep satisfaction.

“You could be pinched,” said the policeman, “For shooting a catapult in the city.”

“You shot it,” I pointed out.

“It’s a dandy,” said the cop, stretching it, and trying another apple in it. He let it go up through the tree. We heard a distant cluck as if it had hit a car top.

“Nix,” said Jimmie sharply.

The policeman hastily shoved the catapult down the back of his pants.

“I’ll have to confiscate this,” he said sternly.

And he stalked over and got on his bicycle.

Rusty, Jimmie and I went over and saw him off the premises in the friendliest fashion.

He rode with the majestic slowness of the law up the lane until he was nearly out of sight. Then he bent over the handlebars and put on speed.

“Yeah,” said Jim. “He’s got a catapult. Now he and his buddies will be shooting with it all night.”

---

Editor’s Note: A catapult was common slang for what we would now call a slingshot.

By Greg Clark, June 26, 1948

Even a big and fighting Airedale can be licked by an irate lady, Jim and Greg find

“That dang Airedale!” barked Jimmie Frise.

“Fighting again?” I inquired.

“No: he jumped the fence,” growled Jim, “and scratched and kicked our zinnia bed all to pieces.”

“Aw, at this time of year, Jim,” I soothed, “all dogs are pretty frisky. Maybe it was some other…”

“No, no, the family saw him,” snorted Jim. “He just jumped the fence, glanced around the garden and saw the zinnia bed all nicely laid out. He jumped right into the middle of it and started scratching and kicking for all he was worth. Malicious damage, if ever you saw it!”

“What are you going to do? See McGillicuddy?” I asked.

“Something has got to be done,” declared Jim with finality. “That dog has become a public nuisance and a public menace.”

“McGillicuddy is very fond of that dog, Jim,” I submitted. “After all, like master, like dog. McGillicuddy is a big, rough, cheery, quarrelsome sort of guy.”

“I don’t care how big and rough he is,” snapped Jim. “I’m going up and have a showdown about that dog.”

“Look,” I reasoned. “All dogs are public nuisances and public menaces. If every dog was as tame and docile as Dolly here …”

I had Dolly on a leash out for an evening stroll. That is how I happened to walk around to Jim’s.

“Hi, Dolly!” greeted Jim.

Dolly, puffing, gave her tail a brief wag. She is a cocker spaniel, black and white. Veterinary science has condemned her to permanent spinsterhood. She used to have too much coat, so we clipped her. That made her coat grow into fur. Now she is as broad as she is long, round as a bolster and finds life pretty heavy going. But she is the gentlest, mildest, least playful little spinster in the world.

“Dolly is at least a lady,” said Jim. “I don’t suppose she ever did a mischievous thing in her life.”

“Oh, yes, when she was a pup, she chewed up slippers and things,” I admitted.

“I suppose,” said Jim, “she is the only dog for five blocks around here that hasn’t been chewed up by that dang Airedale!”

“Aw, even fighting dogs don’t fight with females,” I reminded him. “That’s one thing about dogs. They know enough to leave a lady dog alone. Lady dogs can be pretty spiteful.”

“That Airedale of McGillicuddy’s,” declared Jim, “has nearly killed every dog in the neighborhood.”

“I don’t think McGillicuddy would be bothered,” I reflected, “with a dog that wasn’t the boss of the street.”

“Terrier!” said Jim, caustically. “Airedale terrier, they call it! Why, that dog weighs 50 pounds, if It weighs an ounce.”

“It’s still a terrier,” I pointed out.

“Terriers,” countered Jim, “are small, handy dogs: not moose. I bet a true terrier doesn’t weigh 10 pounds.”

“Oh, yes,” I assured him. “A fox terrier can weigh as much as 18 pounds. Maybe an Irish terrier can go as much as 25 pounds. A good 45- or 50-pound Airedale isn’t out of the way…”

“But terriers,” complained Jim, “are supposed to be rat-killers, vermin-killers. What kind of vermin could a 50-pound Airedale find to kill?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Airedales are used out west for hunting grizzly bears and mountain lions. They’re mighty fighters.”

“I think I’ll suggest to McGillicuddy,” said Jim acidly, “that he send his dog out to the Rockies. I’ll suggest that if he admires pugnacity, he ought to give his dog a chance, instead of letting him tear up little spaniels and house pets…”

“Aha, has he been at your Rusty again?” I exclaimed seeing the light.

“No, no,” assured Jim. “While I object to his fighting, it’s this malicious damage to gardens that has got me roused up.”

“Why don’t you report it to the police ” I suggested.

“Aw, everybody in the district,” scoffed Jim, “has reported that dog one time or another in the past year. And what happens? The cops call on McGillicuddy. He invites the cops in, and they sit around talking about he-man dogs and sissy neighbors. And then the cops come out, laughing, and waving good-bye to McGillicuddy like birds of a feather.”

At this moment, we heard barking up the street. And down came Rusty. Jim’s Sinn Fein Irish water spaniel, like a brown streak, while behind him, bellowing like a lion, came McGillicuddy’s big Airedale, Pete.

When Dolly saw them, she promptly sat down a bared her little teeth.

The two raced past, as Rusty made for the shelter of Jim’s house. Pete, suddenly distracted by Jim’s shoulder and waving arms, gave up the chase and rather indignantly paused, stared at Jim and then retreated with dignity back up toward his own house.

“See what I mean?” growled Jim fiercely. There was a fight, if Rusty hadn’t run. Did you ever see such a sullen, impudent stare as an Airedale can give you? Why, they don’t look you in the face at all. They look at your calf or your thigh or some place on your anatomy, as if cogitating whether to make a grab or not.”

“Pete’s quite a dog,” I murmured.

Rusty came out, looking a little verminous, and glanced cautiously up the street. He trotted over to greet Dolly. But she bared her little white teeth and snarled. Rusty, respectful as all dogs are to ladies backed away and ignored her.

Up the street, there was a sudden squall and yammer of dogs fighting, and down came a small black dog running for his life, with Pete, the Airedale, in large bounding pursuit.

“Awfff!” cried Jimmie, suddenly. “I’m going to deal with this business RIGHT NOW! Come on!”

“Why not write him a letter, Jim?” I suggested.

But Jim was striding up the street. I hauled Dolly to her feet and we followed.

As we neared McGillicuddy’s house, we could see him kneeling on his front steps. He was painting them. In the cool of the evening.

When we drew close, I noted that he had just finished painting his verandah, a pretty Spanish tile red, and was now starting down the steps. He had the top one done.

Pete, the Airedale, was sitting on the lawn watching his lord and master. And as we drew level and paused, Pete stood up and barked at us loudly and vulgarly, as only an Airedale can. His button eyes studied us anatomically.

“Shut up,” commanded McGillicuddy, turning around. “Hey! Hullo!”

McGillicuddy is one of those big, brindled, freckled characters, jovial and hearty, the Airedale type himself. He will be friendly or quarrelsome with you at the drop of the hat. Whichever you like. He is one of those breezy obliging type. I am rather fond of McGillicuddy; but he isn’t my near neighbor, you understand.

“Mac,” said Jim, “I’ve got to complain about Pete.”

“Shut up. Get away. Sit down!” commanded McGillicuddy, and Pete obeyed. “What’s he done now?”

“He came into our garden,” enumerated Jim, “he jumped the fence, see? And after a brief look around, he leaped square into the zinnia bed and proceeded to scratch and kick it all the pieces.”

McGillicuddy looked long and steadily at Jim, with an Airedale expression in his eyes.

“No dog,” he said. “would do such a thing!”

“But I tell you,” cried Jim with sudden heat, “the family saw him. He just jumped the fence, stood looking around a minute. And then took one leap into the zinnia bed and started scratching and kicking for all he was worth. A straight case of malicious damage!”

McGillicuddy began to get a little red in the face. His freckles stood out.

“Look!” he said, “It doesn’t make sense! Why would dog do such a thing?”

“That isn’t for me to answer,” retorted Jim. “That’s for you to answer. That darn dog of yours is a public menace. He is fighting all the time. He upsets garbage pails. And he tears up gardens.”

McGillicuddy took a long, slow breath, and took a couple of strokes with his paint brush on the top step to cool himself off.

“Now, let’s be reasonable,” he said. “Dogs are only human. You can’t expect a big, vigorous dog like Pete to sit around like a bump on a log like that silly little spaniel there.”

He indicated Dolly, who was sitting rather like a bump. I pulled the leash and got her to her feet. She panted with the effort.

“Every man,” explained McGillicuddy heartily, “to his taste in dogs. I can’t see what you see in that flop-eared Irish water spaniel you’ve got.”

“I’ve got a golden retriever too,” declared Jim with dignity. “but a farmer keeps him out in the country.”

“Every man to his fancy,” agreed McGillicuddy. “But you see, I like Airedales. I like big Airedales, big, lively, spirited dogs. Sure, he fights a little; sure, he is a little rough and rowdy. But there you are!”

“I think,” said Jim levelly, “I’ll bring my golden in to town for a few days. He’s about the size of that Airedale. He might teach Pete a little lesson.”

“Oho, is that so?” scoffed McGillicuddy, suddenly roused. “Well, mister, any old time you like…”

He stepped down off the steps.

Pete, sensing his master’s ire, leaped up and jumped toward us.

Dolly, like a flash, jerked the leash out of my hands and with a small fierce feminine snarl and her lady teeth bared viciously, made a dive for the big dog.

Without a yelp, Pete turned like lightning and bounded past McGillicuddy’s legs.

He bounded up the steps. On the wet top step he skidded. On his side and rump, he slid across the full depth of the freshly painted tile red verandah and came up with a bump against the wall. Little Dolly, fairly fizzing with rage, was right after him.

Around and around in a mad, slithering scramble, the two raced and snarled and fought, the big dog desperately trying to avoid the nasty nips the bulgy little cocker was inflicting on him. McGillicuddy bounded on to the verandah and booted them both off, I caught the leash as Dolly yipped past, and Pete, all red with paint, fled down the side drive.

“Okay,” wuffed McGillicuddy from the wrecked verandah. “Okay! You win, boys. Any dog that would run from a little wee whiffet like that thing…”

“All dogs are scared of irate ladies,” I apologized for Pete.

“To heck with it!” panted McGillicuddy. “Look at my verandah! The clumsy big oaf! Chased by a rabbit, by gosh! Okay: I’ll send him out to my brother in the country. He raises rabbits.”

“Sorry, McGillicuddy,” said Jim, with stiff lips.

“To heck with it,” growled McGillicuddy, turning to stare at the mess.

We walked back down the street, Dolly fairly staggering with exhaustion.

“Dear,” breathed Jim, when we got a few doors down, “dear little Dolly!”

And with my permission, paint and all, he picked her up and carried her.

This is Jimmie Frise’s last contribution to the Magazine. The beloved cartoonist, who brought humor to hundreds of thousands of Canadian homes, died suddenly June 13.

---

Editor’s Notes: As indicated by the last note in the story, this was the last published Greg-Jim story. His obituary was written by Greg in the previous week’s issue. After a week off, he returned with a story called “The Young Volunteer”, about a boy volunteering to be his new partner. Greg speaks with him suggesting that it is not that easy to find a partner.

“What kind,” he asked, as we fell in step, “of adventure do you think we could have?”

“My rule is,” I informed him, “just walk along and adventure will befall you.”

The next few weeks had stories illustrated by different artists until Duncan Macpherson became the regular artist on August 7, 1948. The new stories included fictional relatives and neighbours, and continued weekly until June 3, 1950, and then became infrequent, with Greg sometimes writing stories, and other times straight up reporting. Macpherson would eventually become a celebrated editorial cartoonist in Canada. The magazine and newspaper industry was undergoing rapid change due to changing consumer tastes and competition from television. The Montreal Standard ceased publication on August 18, 1951, and became “Weekend Picture Magazine” on September 8, 1951, and shortly after changed to “Weekend Magazine”. Greg’s stories in these publications were usually not illustrated, and were the basis for many of his books published in the 1950s and 1960s.

Weekend Magazine was distributed free of charge with 9 daily newspapers across the country in 1951. Weekend offered high-quality colour reproduction to advertisers, good photographs, feature stories and recipes to readers, and a profit-making supplement that boosted circulation for the newspaper publishers. By the 1960s Weekend Magazine was carried in 41 newspapers with a circulation over 2 million, and it was the most popular advertising vehicle in the nation. Colour television and the turn away from general-interest periodicals hurt the magazine, and it got thinner each year. By 1979 it had been merged with The Canadian, and in 1982 Today, the successor supplement, ceased publication.

By Greg Clark, May 29, 1937

“I see by the papers,” said Jimmie Frise, “that there are 15,000,000 dogs in North America.”

“It seems a pretty conservative estimate,” I commented.

“I was going to say,” said Jim, “that there were 15,000,000 dogs in Toronto. Maybe that’s a little high. But did you ever in all your life see so many dogs around as there are nowadays?”

“The country,” I admitted, “is really going to the dogs.”

“The less able the world is to keep dogs,” said Jim, “the more the fashion grows. In more spacious days, when there were no motor cars and every home had some ground around it, I could understand everybody keeping a dog. But under modern conditions It seems to me keeping a dog should be a privilege accorded only those who are qualified. And the qualifications should be enough ground around the home for the dog to play in without risking his life and limb on the trafficky streets. And the other and more Important qualification should be that the dog owner would have enough intelligence to control and master his dog.”

“Well, we’d qualify,” I agreed.  “I must say your old Rusty has almost a human intelligence. And as for my Dolly, she is practically a member of the family.”

“We’ve taken the trouble,” explained Jim. “to train and educate our dogs. Rusty and Dolly are, you might say, modernized dogs. But some of these wild animals that gang up and rove this neighborhood are not only a nuisance but a menace. Here I am putting in my garden for the next couple of nights. Now, Rusty is trained. He knows what a garden is. He never runs on the borders or tramples the young plants. You never catch Rusty digging up the garden or messing about the bushes.”

“Dolly’s the same,” I said. “In fact, I have seen her chasing other dogs out of our garden. Many’s the time last summer I have watched Dolly walking about the garden looking at the flowers just as if she were human being and enjoying them exactly as a human being.”

“Yesterday,” said Jim. “I happened to look out the back window and what did I see? Three of those mutts of the neighborhood, two half-breed collies and a wire-haired terrier, actually burying bones in my perennial borders.”

“Couldn’t you train Rusty to be a policeman?” I asked.

“He wasn’t around,” said Jim, “or he’d have soon had those tramps out of there.”

“I’d say,” I said, “that most of the people in our neighborhood keep dogs by force of habit. They apparently take no pleasure out of them, as we do in Rusty and Dolly. They let them out in the morning, probably giving them kick as they go, and they let them in at night. And for the rest of the day, those dogs just run at large, upsetting garbage pails, scaring the wits out of motorists by dashing recklessly all over the streets, digging in gardens, wrecking ornamental shrubs and generally being public nuisances.”

“It looks like it,” agreed Jim. “Something will have to be done.”

“Now there’s that apartment house along the street,” I reminded him. “I was counting the dogs in it. There are eight families in that house, and I’ll be jiggered if there aren’t nine dogs. One family has two of those bugeyes Pekes.”

On Other People’s Property

“That apartment house,” stated Jim, “has no yard at all. It has a concrete area at the back entirely filled with garages. It has no front lawn to speak of. Where do those nine dogs run?”

“On other people’s property,” I declared.

“Exactly,” said Jim.

“We certainly ought to do something about it,” I asserted. “And we, as dog owners and dog lovers, can’t be accused of being prejudiced against dogs either. I am one of the first to get my dander up when any of these anti-dog people begin their annual uproar about dogs running at large in the city. It is usually about now, when people are putting in their gardens, that the rumpus begins. But there is reason and moderation in all things, including dogs.”

“All I expect of other people,” agreed Jim, “is that they control their dogs the same way I do.”

“That’s it,” I supported. “Let that be our slogan. And if we dog owners start the agitation, it will go a long way further than if these anti-dog people try to do anything.”

“I can’t understand a man or a woman not having a dog,” said Jim. “If I were going to start a political party or a new religion or something, I would take a census of the homes of the city, and where there was a dog, that home I’d invite in.”

“I doubt if there ever was a villain who owned a dog,” I agreed.

“No food and no love is wasted in a house where there is a dog,” declared Jim. “It gets what is left over of both. You can tell all about a home by the dog.”

And with this kindly thought we went to our appointed tasks for the afternoon.

After supper, seeing Jim in his garden south of mine, and I not being quite ready to plant my annuals, as I like the garden to be best in September rather than July when all my family are away, I strolled down to watch him, Dolly joining me.

Jim had the little boxes of petunias and zinnias all laid out ready to be planted, the crimson nicotine and verbenas, the sweet william and orange flare cosmos. I helped him carry the little boxes of plantlings and distribute them around the borders where they would variously go. Old Rusty and Dolly solemnly accompanied us as we moved here and there.

“Look at them,” said Jim, fondly. “See how intelligently they watch us. They know what we are doing. They are interested. I bet they even realize that presently, as the result of this work of ours, the garden will glow and smother with flowers and sweet scents.”

With tongues out, the two sat, a little stoutly, maybe, a little over-fed, most amiably following us.

“No silly romping,” I pointed out. “No nonsense. There’s dogs, Jim.”

And we proceeded to set the plants, Jim scooping the holes with his trowel and I breaking out the seedlings with blocks of earth from the basket complete. We petted them down. Nasturtiums, marigolds, mourning bride, lantana. Clarkia in clumps because it is stringy, verbenas well separated because with their multi-colored stars they will reach and spread. The best part of May is the end where we plant the annuals.

To sort out some weeds that Jim bought to eke out the foot of his garden, such as sunflowers and some coarse climbing nasturtiums for along the fence, we went indoors and down to Jim’s cellar billiard room, and we had hardly been there a minute before Jim, glancing out the cellar window, let forth a wild bellow.

Rusty and Dolly had wandered off when we had come indoors, and as we reached the back door, there were no fewer than seven dogs holding a kind of canine gymkhana in the garden.

“Hyaaah,” roared Jimmie, hurling a flower pot at them.

There was a red setter, a police dog, a scrub collie, a wire-haired terrier, a goggle-eyed Boston bull, a Scotty, and big over-grown Springer spaniel, weighing about sixty pounds, a kind of a mattress of a dog, brown and white.

They were racing in circles, trampling all over the newly planted seedings, ducking around perennials just decently leafing out of the earth, plunging through spiraea…

“Hyaaaaaah,” we roared, charging into the yard.

All but the Springer spaniel, without so much as letting on they saw us, raced out of the back gate and down the street, like a gang of panting, laughing hoodlums.

The Springer, with a look of interest, was braced in behind Jim’s loveliest Japonica bush, watching us with rigid tail and cocked head.

“You!” said Jim, advancing cautiously.

“Easy, Jim,” I warned. “Get behind him and chase him out.”

“I’ll catch him,” said Jim. “and deliver him to his owner.”

“He may be cross,” I warned.

But the Springer spaniel, all feathers and wool and burly good nature, was far from cross. He was for play.

With a slithering, dirt-flinging spring, he wheeled and raced along the wire fence, every bound crashing him heavily on to some little cluster of freshly set and fragile plantlings.

“Hyaaahh,” we roared at him.

With a skid and a slither, he would halt and watch us, tail wagging frantically and mouth agape in a wide grin of joy.

“Don’t try to catch him,” I said, “he thinks we’re playing.”

“I’ll show him if we’re playing,” gritted Jim.

He advanced, half crouched.

The Springer, with an ecstatic slither, was off again, crashing through a bed of Darwin tulips with his whole sixty pounds and plunging into a young spiraea bush as if to play hide and seek.

“Aw,” moaned Jim terribly.

“Shoo him out, shoo him out,” I yelled. “He’ll romp in here all night, if you let him.”

“Rusty, Rusty,” roared Jimmie into the evening.

“Hyuh, Dolly, hyuh, hyuh,” I cried, “sick ‘im.”

But Rusty and Dolly were absent at the one time we needed them.

“Here, help corner him,” commanded Jim. “You come along that way and I’ll come this way and we’ll corner him by the house.”

So we slowly converged.

The Springer waited, with sly, joyous eyes, until we were almost on him before, with a plunge that flattened the spiraea and carried him horribly on top of the whole cluster of long slender orange fare cosmos plantlings, he burst the blockade and tore across to the opposite border of the garden and took refuge, playfully, behind a perennial phlox that, in another month, is the wonder of the whole district, so gorgeous a magenta is it, with its hundred blooms.

“Oooooh,” moaned Jim, “if he crushes that!”

“Throw something at him,” I insisted. “Make him get out.”

“Now I’m determined,” declared Jim gratingly, “to catch him and deliver him.”

“Very well, then,” I decreed, “Shut the gate.”

So while Jim shut the gate, I picked up a few odds and ends, the trowel, a couple of flower pots and a garden stake. And with these as ammunition, I drove the astonished Springer into the corner by the house while Jim charged in and grabbed him.

He struggled furiously and then angrily, growling and snarling.

“Get the rug out of the car,” panted Jimmie, wrapping himself around the astonished and frightened dog.

I nipped over and snatched the car rug and brought it. Jim managed to roll the big spaniel in it, leaving only his head out.

We straightened ourselves up and dusted off.

“There,” gasped Jim. “Now, Mister Springer, I know where you live.”

“What will you say?” I asked, “Better get it planned so you won’t just arrive in a temper and say worse than nothing.”

“I’ll simply say, ‘Sir’,” said Jim, “here is your dog. It came into my garden and trampled all over my newly planted seedlings. It plunged through my tulips and bushes and crushed my perennial phlox. I do not blame the dog. I blame the owner of the dog who has not taught it to behave and to respect gardens.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“I’ll hand him his dog,” said Jim “and warn him that if the dog damages my garden again, I will take steps that will astonish him.”

“Let’s go,” I said, because the big Springer was patiently struggling within the folds of the car rug and I was afraid he might work free.

Jim carried the extraordinary bundle down the street. The owner lived about eight doors south.

“Ring the front door,” said Jim. “We’ll make no back door peddling of this.”

I rang. I rang twice. I rapped.

“They’re out, I guess,” I guessed.

“Maybe they’re in the yard,” said Jim, starting around.

In the yard, on the clothes line, some sort of chintz curtain was hanging. My Dolly, sweetest and gentlest of dogs, was clinging to one corner of the curtain, taking little runs and a swing, and chewing and growling secretly and furiously with the fun.

Fair in the middle of the yard, in a bed of resplendent parrot tulips, elderly and amiable Rusty, most intelligent of all the dogs I ever knew, had all but vanished down an enormous hole he had dug, just his hind quarters and tail showing until Jim’s shout brought him backing out to look, with easy innocence, over his shoulder.

“Jim,” I said low, “drop that dog and let’s sneak.”

The kitchen window of the house next door squealed suddenly open and a red-faced lady put her head out.

“What are you doing with that dog in the blanket?” she demanded chokingly. “I’ll tell Mr. Hooper on you. The very idea. And look what those brutes are doing to his garden and to Mrs. Hooper’s chintz.”

Jim unrolled the Springer and he landed heavily and ran straight for Rusty, his hackles up.

“Those two creatures,” shouted the lady above the racket that Rusty and Dolly were making in a fight with the Springer, “are the worst nuisances in the entire neighborhood. And yet I catch you in the act of trying smother the loveliest, kindest dog in the whole city.”

Jim and I withdrew up the side drive and then turned and called Rusty and Dolly. They came, being glad to leave the Springer who was beginning to get rough.

We hastened up the street, the Springer pursuing us with hoarse and angry barks.

“It’s always the other fellow’s dog,” reflected Jim.

“And to somebody, I suppose,” I said, “we are always the other fellow. Should I let those people know who chewed the chintz?”

“No,” said Jim, as we turned into Jim’s yard. “The Springer will get the blame and it will all even up in the long run. He deserves the blame to make up for what damage he has done elsewhere.”

“These two,” I said, “never get any blame around here.”

“Oh, well,” said Jim, starting to walk along the borders to re-pet up all the little seedlings, “they behave around home. What more can you ask?”

So Rusty and Dolly, their tongues hanging out, followed us along, sitting down behind us to watch the job and getting up to follow whenever we moved five feet, and we rubbed their towsled heads and scratched their eternally itchy chins, and they looked up at us with half-closed eyes of adoration and perfect understanding.

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Editor’s Notes: Pet ownership was not really that common until the rise of the middle class in the 19th century. You can see how things have changed, even since the time of the article in 1937. It was not unusual for dogs to roam free, even in a city. Children were warned to be wary of packs of dogs. Picking up dog poop was not a concern until legislation started in the 1980s. Even the concept of packaged dog food did not exist. Dogs were expected to just eat the scraps of the family meals. Canned dog food was only invented in 1922, and dry kibble was not invented until 1956.

A gymkhana is an Indian term which originally referred to a place of assembly.