DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2786, 27 September 1910, Page 7

DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

f REMARKABLE CANINE ORGANI-

SATION WITH ITS OWN RULERS

'"Every morning at four o'clock the dogs of Constantinople turn their faces towards Mecca and howl their heartbreak to the sky. At least," writes Albert Bigelow Paine in "'Harper's Weekly," "I suppose they turn toward Mecca—that beirtg the general habit here when one has anything official to give out.

"I know they howl and bark and make such a distarbance as is heard nowhere else on earth. In America two or three dogs will keep a neighbourhood awake, but imagine a vast city of dogs all barking at once — forty or fifty dogs to the block.

"The Constantinople dogs are not as unsightly and as wretched as I expected" to find them. Life for them is not a path of roses, but neither is it a trail of absolute privation. They live on refuse, and there is plenty of refuse. They are in fair condition, therefore, as to flesh, and they do not look particularly unhappy, though they are dirty enough, and sometimes mangy and motheaten and tufty, but then the Turks themselves are all of these things, and why should the dogs be otherwise ?

"'The type of these dogs impresses me. They have reverted to the original pattern —they are wolf dogs. They vary only in colour—usually some tone of grizzly grey—and not widely in that. They have returned to race—to THE OLD WILD BREED

that made his bed in the grass and revolved three times before he was ready to lie down. "One might expect them to be ugly and dangerous, but they are not. They are the kindest, gentlest creatures of the dog family, notwithstanding the harsh treatment they receive, and the most intelligent. No one really human can study them without sympathy and admiration. "I have watched these dogs a good deal, and a lady of Constantinople, the wife of a foreign Minister, has added largely to my information on the subject. They are quite wonderful in many ways. They have divided themselves into groups of squads, and their territory into districts with borders exactly defined. They know just about how much substance each district will supply, and the squads are not allowed to grow.

"There is a captain to each of these companies, and HIS RULE IS ABSOLUTE. When the garbage from each house is brought out and dumped into the street he oversees the distrihution and keeps order. He keeps it, too. There is no fighting and very little discord, unless some outlaw dog from a neighbouring group attempts to make an incursion. Then there is a wild outbreak, and if that dog escapes undamaged he is lucky. "The captain of a group is a sultan with the power of life and death over his subjects. When puppies come along lie designates the few—the very few—that are to live, and one mother nurses several of the reduced litters—the different mothers taking turns. "When a dog gets too old to be useful in the strenuous round—when hj« is no longer valuable to the band —lie is systematically put out of the way by starvation. A day comes when the captain issues some kind of an edict that he is no longer to have food. From that moment until his death not a morsel passes his lips. "With longing eyes he looks at the others eating, but he makes no attempt to join them. Now and again a bit of something falls his way. The temptation is too strong—he reaches towards the morsel. The captain, who overlooks nothing, gives a low prowl. The dying creature shrinks back without a murmur. He knows the law. Perhaps he, too, ! was once a captain. I "As a rule it is unwise to show kin iness or the least attention to I dogs. The slightest word or | notice unlocks such a storehouse of ! gratitude and heart hunger in those I poor creatures that one can never i venture near that neighbourhood again without being fairly overwhelmed with gratitude and devotion."