Quotes from Albert Payson Terhune

The dog was cold and in pain. But being only a dog it did not occur to him to trot off home to the comfort of the library fire and leave his master to fend for himself.

Dogs, the foremost snobs in creation, are quick to notice the difference between a well-clad and a disreputable stranger.

You can have a thousand dollars of mine," laughed the Master, "for every bite Lad gives Bobby—or any other child. Let them alone. Neither of them could have a better pal than the other. With Lad to tag around with him, Bobby is safer than if you hired three private detectives to guard him.

Then, over the smugly complacent land, rang a bugle call. Half the world was sick unto death with the Hun pestilence, and America alone could stay the hideous disease's assault on humanity. America alone could cure a dying world. To achieve this Heaven-sent miracle, the lives of thousands of brave men were needed. An at the terrible blast of the bugle-call these men responded in the millions. Dick Snowden was one of them.

He had failed. He had awakened with the sudden knowledge of his master's peril. He had followed the urge of the call. And all at once he had realized that for some reason he cold not hope to lead his mistress to the man who so sorely needed her aid. Perplexed, heartsick, he had crawled back; helpless to do more.

A dog-pound is not pleasant to look upon. It is little pleasanter to think upon. It is one of the needful evils of every large town – an evil that is needful to public health and to public safety, so say the city fathers.

This dog, Robin Adair, was the joy of Eve's heart – or he had been, when her heart still could hold joy and not merely fever and delirium.

Watch me do it, Jeff! Watch me do it, square!

In an instant, the pup's trustful friendliness was gone. The man had come on the Place, at dead of night, and had struck him. That must be paid for! Never would the pup forget,—his agonizing lesson that night intruders are not to be trusted or even to be tolerated. Within a single second, he had graduated from a little friend of all the world, into a vigilant watchdog.

Humans had celebrated her recovery with presents, and he, watching, had imitated them. He had gone far and had toiled hard to bring her an offering that his canine mind deemed all-desirable.

My disease," she said, speaking fast, "dates back to Bible days. Leah had it, in the book of Genesis. It is wallfloweritis." "Huh?" broke in Harding, dazedly curious. "Wallfloweritis," she repeated stoutly. "An acute and chronic case of being a perennial wallflower. Oh, please don't be polite and silly and deny it!

We have one symptom in common already. Only you may think I've an advantage over you because I can change my name by marrying. Well, I can't. I shall be twenty-four next April. And nobody ever asked me to marry. That means nobody ever is going to. So let's pass on to the next symptom.

ignored with disdain by

A true watchdog sleeps with all his senses or the very edge of wakefulness. And when he wakens, he does not waken as do we humans;—yawningly, dazedly, drunk with slumber. At one moment he is sound asleep. At the next he is broad awake; with every faculty alert.

The born watchdog patrols his beat once in so often during the night. At all times he must sleep with one ear and one eye alert. By day or by night he must discriminate between the visitor whose presence is permitted and the trespasser whose presence is not. He must know what class of undesirables to scare off with a growl and what class needs stronger measures. He must also know to the inch the boundaries of his own master's land.

When I think of the people who give their sons and everything they have, to the country, I feel ashamed of not being more willing to let a mere dog go. But then Bruce is not just a 'mere dog.' He is – he is Bruce.

If it's a freak to be the only puppy in a litter," answered the Mistress, refusing to part with her enthusiasm over the miracle, "then this one ought to bring us luck. Let's call him 'Bruce.' You remember, the original Bruce won because of the mystic number, seven. This Bruce has got to make up to us for the seven puppies that weren't born. See how proud she is of him! Isn't she a sweet little mother?

But of a sudden his head went up; his stiff-poised brush broke into swift wagging; his lips curled down. He had recognized that his prospective foe was not of his own sex. (And nowhere, except among humans, does a full-grown male ill-treat or even defend himself against the female of his species.)

For this is the considerate way of dogs; and of cats as well. When dire sickness smites them, they do not hang about, craving sympathy and calling for endless attention. All they want is to get out of the way,—well out of the way, into the woods and swamps and mountains; where they may wrestle with their life-or-death problem in their own primitive manner; and where, if need be, they may die alone and peacefully, without troubling anyone else.

And, when some such suffering beast is seen, on his way to solitude, we humans prove our humanity by raising the idiotic bellow of "Mad dog!" and by chasing and torturing the victim. All this, despite proof that not one sick dog in a thousand, thus assailed, has any disease which is even remotely akin to rabies.

There are two things—and perhaps only two things—of which the best type of thoroughbred collie is abjectly afraid and from which he will run for his life. One is a mad dog. The other is a poisonous snake.

If you have, you certainly must know that a dog, afflicted with genuine rabies, will no more turn out of his way to bite anyone than a typhoid patient will jump out of bed to chase a doctor. I'm not saying that the bite of any sick animal (or of any sick human, for that matter) isn't more or less dangerous; unless it's carefully washed out and painted with iodine

Such a collie was Lad. At a time when Bruce and Wolf and Bobby and Lady and young Gray Dawn were half naked, Lad was still carrying the enormous outer and under coat which by rights should have been his in January. Not for another month or more would he begin to shed in real earnest—and to strew the floors and rugs and furniture, and the trousers legs and skirts of the household, with tufts and strands of dead hair.

All of which is a digression, but it is common sense and perhaps may one day save you from needless terror or from needless cruelty to an innocent animal.