The English Sheep Dog
The origin of the sheep-dog is somewhat various; but the predominant breed is that of the intelligent and docile spaniel. Although it is now found in every civilized country in which the sheep is cultivated, ii is not coeval with the domestication of that animal. When the pastures were in a manner open to the first occupant, and every shepherd had a common property in them, it was not so necessary to restrain the wandering of the sheep, and the voice of the shepherd was usually sufficient to collect and to guide them. He preceded the flock, and they "followed him whithersoever he went." In process of time, however, man availed himself of the sagacity of the dog to diminish his own labour and fatigue, and this useful servitor became the guide and defender of the flock.
The sheep-dog possesses much of the same form and character in every country. The muzzle is sharp, the ears are short and erect, and the animal is covered, particularly about the neck, with thick and shaggy hair. He has usually two dew claws on each of the hind legs; not, however, as in the one claw of other dogs, having a jointed attachment to the limb, but merely connected by the skin and some slight cellular substance. These excrescences should be cut off when the dog is young. The tail is slightly turned upwards and long, and almost as bushy as that of a fox, even in that variety whose coat is almost smooth. He is of a black colour or black prevails, mixed with gray or brown.
Professor Grognier gives the following account of this dog as he is found in France:
"The shepherd's dog, the least removed from the natural type of the dog, is of a middle size; his ears short and straight; the hair long, principally on the tail, and of a dark colour; the tail is carried horizontally or a little elevated. He is very indifferent to caresses. possessed of much intelligence and activity to discharge the duties for which he was designed. In one or other of its varieties it is found in every part of France. Sometimes there is but a single breed, in others there are several varieties. It lives and maintains its proper characteristics, while other races often degenerate. Everywhere it preserves its proper distinguishing type. It is the servant of man, while other breeds vary with a thousand circumstances. It has one appropriate mission, and that it discharges in the most admirable way: there is evidently a kind and wise design in this."
This account of the French sheep-dog, or of the sheep-dog everywhere, is as true as it is beautiful. One age succeeds to another, we pass from one climate to another, and everything varies and changes, but the shepherd's dog is what he ever was — the guardian of our flocks. There are, however, two or more species of this dog; the one which Professor Grognier has described, and which guards and guides the sheep in the open and level country, where wolves seldom intrude; another crossed with the mastiff, or little removed from that dog, used in the woody and mountainous countries, their guard more than their guide4. In Great Britain, where he has principally to guide and not to guard the flock, he is comparatively a small dog. He is so in the northern and open parts of the country, where activity is principally wanted; but, in the more enclosed districts, and where strength is often needed to turn an obstinate sheep, he is crossed with some larger dog, as the rough terrier, or sometimes the pointer, or now and then the bull-dog: in fact, almost any variety that has strength and stoutness may be employed. Thus we obtain the larger sheep-dog and the drover's dog. The sagacity, forbearance, and kindness of the sheep-dog are generally retained, but from these crosses there is occasionally a degree of ferocity from which the sheep often suffer.
In other countries, where the flock is exposed to the attack of the wolf, the sheep-dog is larger than the British drover's dog, and not far inferior in size to the mastiff. The strength and ferocity which qualify him to combat with the wolf, would occasionally be injurious or fatal to those who somewhat obstinately opposed his direction; therefore, in Denmark and in Spain, the dog is rarely employed to drive the flock. It is the office of the shepherd, to know every individual under his charge, to, as in olden times, "call them all by their names," and have always some docile and tamed wether who will take the lead, almost as subservient to his voice as is the dog himself, and whom the flock will immediately follow.
In whatever country the dog is used, partly or principally to protect the flock from the ravages of the wolf, he is as gentle as a lamb, except when opposed to his natural enemy; and it is only in England that the guardian of the sheep occasionally injures and worries them, and that many can be found bearing the mark of the tooth. This may he somewhat excusable (although it is often carried to a barbarous extent) in the drover's dog; but it will admit of no apology in the shepherd's dog. It is the result of the idleness of the boy, or the mingled brutality and idleness of the shepherd, who is attempting to make the dog do his own work and that of his master too. We have admired the Prussian sheep-dog in the discharge of his duty, and have seen him pick out the marked sheep, or stop and turn the flock, as cleverly as any Highland colley, but he never bit them. He is a shorter, stronger, and more compact dog than ours. He pushes against them and forces them along. If they rebel against this mild treatment, the shepherd is at hand to enforce obedience; and the flock is as easily and perfectly managed as any English or Highland one, and a great deal more so than the majority that we have seen.
Mr. Trimmer, in his work on the Merinos, speaking of the Spanish flocks, says:
"There is no driving of the flock; that is a practice entirely unknown; but the shepherd, when he wishes to remove his sheep, calls to him a tame wether accustomed to feed from his hands. The favourite, however distant, obeys his call, and the rest follow. One or more of the dogs, with large collars armed with spikes, in order to protect them from the wolves, precede the flock, others skirt it on each side, and some bring up the rear. If a sheep be ill or lame, or lag behind unobserved by the shepherds, they stay with it and defend it until some one return in search of it. With us, dogs are too often used for other and worse purposes. In open, unenclosed districts, they are indispensable; but in others I wish them, I confess, either managed, or encouraged less. If a sheep commits a fault in the sight of an intemperate shepherd, or accidentally offends him, it is dogged into obedience: the signal is given, the dog obeys the mandate, and the poor sheep flies round the field to escape from the fangs of him who should be his protector, until it becomes half dead with fright and exhaustion, while the trembling flock crowd together dreading the same fate, and the churl exults in this cowardly victory over a weak and defenceless animal."5
If the farmer will seriously calculate the number of ewes that have yeaned before their time, and of the lambs that he has lost, and the accidents that have occurred from the sheep pressing upon one another in order to escape from the dog, and if he will also take into account the continual disturbance of the sheep while grazing, by the approach of the dog, and the consequent interference with the cropping and the digestion of the food, he will attach more importance to the good temper of the dog and of the shepherd than he has been accustomed to do. There would be no injustice, or rather a great deal of propriety, in inflicting a fine for every tooth-mark that could be detected. When the sheep, instead of collecting round the dog, and placing themselves under his protection on any sudden alarm, uniformly fly from him with terror, the farmer may he assured there is something radically wrong in the management of the flock.
Instinct and education combine to fit this dog for our service. The pointer will act without any great degree of instruction, and the setter will crouch; and most certainly the sheep-dog, and especially if he has the example of an older and expert one, will, almost without the teaching of the master, become everything that can be wished, obedient to every order, even to the slightest motion of the hand. There is a natural predisposition for the office he has to discharge, which it requires little trouble or skill to develop and perfect.
It is no unpleasing employment to study the degree in which the several breeds of dogs are not only highly intelligent, but fitted by nature for the particular duty they have to perform. The pointer, the setter, the hound, the greyhound, the terrier, the spaniel, and even the bull-dog, were made, and almost perfected, by nature chiefly for one office alone, although they maybe useful in many other ways. This is well illustrated in the sheep-dog. If he be but with his master, he lies content, indifferent to every surrounding object, seemingly half asleep and half awake, rarely mingling with his kind, rarely courting, and generally shrinking from, the notice of a stranger; but the moment duty calls, his sleepy, listless eye, becomes brightened; he eagerly gazes on his master, inquires and comprehends all he is to do, and, springing up, gives himself to the discharge of his duty with a sagacity, and fidelity, and devotion, too rarely equalled even by man himself.
Mr. James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, living in his early days among the sheep and their quadruped attendants, and an accurate observer of nature, as well an exquisite poet, gives some anecdotes of the colley, (the Highland term for sheep-dog), with which the reader will not be displeased.
"My dog Sirrah," says he, in a letter to the Editor of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, "was, beyond all comparison, the best dog I ever saw. He had a somewhat surly and unsocial temper, disdaining all flattery, and refusing to be caressed, but his attention to my commands and interest will never again be equalled by any of the canine race. When I first saw him, a drover was leading him with a rope. He was both lean and hungry, and far from being a beautiful animal; for he was almost black, and had a grim face, striped with dark brown. I thought I perceived a sort of sullen intelligence in his countenance, notwithstanding his dejected and forlorn appearance, and I bought him. He was scarcely a year old, and knew so little of herding that he had never turned a sheep in his life; but, as soon as he discovered that it was his duty to do so, and that it obliged me, I can never forget with what anxiety and eagerness he learned his different evolutions; and when I once made him understand a direction, he never forgot or mistook it."
On one night, a large flock of lambs that were under the Ettrick Shepherd's care, frightened by something, scampered away in three different directions across the hills, in spite of all that he could do to keep them together. "Sirrah," said the shepherd, "they're a' awa!"
It was too dark for the dog and his master to see each other at any considerable distance, but Sirrah understood him, and set off after the fugitives. The night passed on, and Hogg and his assistant traversed every neighbouring hill in anxious but fruitless search for the lambs; but he could hear nothing of them nor of the dog, and he was returning to his master with the doleful intelligence that he had lost all his lambs. "On our way home, however," says he, "we discovered a lot of lambs at the bottom of a deep ravine called the Flesh Cleuch, and the indefatigable Sirrah standing in front of them, looking round for some relief, but still true to his charge. We concluded that it was one of the divisions which Sirrah had been unable to manage, until he came to that commanding situation. But what was our astonishment when we discovered that not one lamb of the flock was missing! How he had got all the divisions collected in the dark, is beyond my comprehension. The charge was left entirely to himself from midnight until the rising sun; and, if all the shepherds in the forest had been there to have assisted him, they could not have effected it with greater promptitude. All that I can say is, that I never felt so grateful to any creature under the sun us I did to my honest Sirrah that morning."
Also see: Dog Breeds info.