Sheep-Dog Stories.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 6, 9 February 1907, Page 42

Sheep-Dog Stories.

Tales of intelligence amongst animals are always interesting, and perhaps never more so than when concerning dogs. Miss Mary Austin discusses, in “Harper’s,” the why and wherefore of a sheepdog’s'instinct, or whatever-it is. Her article is besprinkled with stories to illustrate her various points, and we give a few of these: "Curiously, the obligation of his work —who shall say it is not that higher form of habit out of wnieh the sense of duty shapes itself?—is always stronger in the dog than the love for the herder. Lacking a direct command, in any severance of their interests, the eollie' stays by the sheep. In a country of young, roaring rivers there was a shepherd who died suddenly in his eamp, and was not found for two days. The Hock was gone on from the meadow where he lay, straying toward high places, as shepherdless sheep will, and the dogs with them. They bad returned to lick the dead face of the herder, no doubt they had mourned above him, in their fashion, in the dusk of pines, but though they eould win no authority from him, they stayed by the flock. At the end of the third day. when succour found them, the dogs bad come a flock-journey from that place, and had turned the sheep toward home. “The superintendent of Tejon told me of a dog that eould be trusted to take

a bunch of muttons that had been en* out for use at the.ranch-house, and from any point of the range, drive them a whole day’s journey l --at his order’,- and bring them safely to the home corral. Senor Lopez, I think, related of another that it .was sent out to hunt estrays, and not returning, was hunted for, and found warding a ewe and twin lambs, ticking his -wounds and sniffing, not without the appearance of satisfaction, at a newly-killed coyote. The dng must have found the ewe in travail, for thq lambs were hut a few hours old, and been made aware of it by what absolute and elemental means who shall say, and stood guarding the event through the night. i , "At Los Alisos there was a bitch of such excellent temper that she was thought of more value for raising pups than herding; she was, therefore, when her litter came, taken from the floek and given quarters at the ranch-house. But in the morning Flora went out to the sheep. She sought them in the pastures where they had been, and kept the accustomed round, returning wearied ' to her young at noon; she followed after them at evening, and covered with panting sides the distance they had put between them and her litter. At the end of the second day, when she came to het bed, half-dead with running, she was tied, but gnawed the rope, and in twentyfour hours was out on the cold trail of the floek. One of the vaqueros found, her twenty miles from home, working faint and frenzied over its vanishing scent. It was only after this fruitless sally she was reconciled to her new ‘ estate.

“What a herd dog has first to learn is to know every one of two or three hundred sheep, and to know them both by sight and smell. This he does thoroughly. When Watterson was running sheep on the plains he had a young collie not yet put to the herd, but kept about the pumping-plant.’ As the sheep came in by hundreds to the troughs, the dog grew so to know them that .when they had picked up a- stray.fro,n another band he discovered it from afar off, and darting as a hornet, nipping-and yelping, parted it out from the band. At that time, no mere man would have pretended, without the aid. of the brand, to recognise any of the thousands that bore it. .

*How long recollection stays by the dog is not certain, but at least a twelvemonth, as was proved to Filon Girard, after he had lost a third of' his band when the Santa Anna came roaring up by Lone Pine with a cloud of saffroncoloured dust on its wings. After shearing of next year, passing elose to another blind, Filon’s dogs set themselves unbidden to routing out of it, and rounding with their own, nearly twenty head, which the herder, being an honest man. freely admitted he had picked up on the mesa following after Filon the spring before. “Pete’s dog, Bourdaloue, at the Stockton landing, with no assistance, put eight hundred wild sheep from the highlands on the boat in eight minutes, by running along the backs of the floek until he had picked out the stubborn or stupid leaders that caused the sheep to jam in the runway, and by sharp bites set them forward, himself treading the backs of the racing floek, like the premiere equestrienne of the circus, which all the men of the shipping cheered to