“Pep sniffed at his master’s face eagerly.” Page 96

PEP The Story of a Brave Dog

By CLARENCE HAWKES

ILLUSTRATED By WILLIAM VAN DRESSER

MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY SPRINGFIELD · MASSACHUSETTS

Copyright, 1922 By MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY Springfield, Massachusetts

All Rights Reserved

Bradley Quality Books

Printed in United States of America

To Dog-Lovers, the whole world over, this book is fraternally dedicated

INTRODUCTION A FRIEND TO MAN

By Clarence Hawkes

IT is almost like a stern irony of fate, that man’s faithful, gentle friend, the dog, should have sprung from one of the most thoroughly hated and despised brutes in the animal kingdom, the wolf.

Yet this is a scientific fact. The wolf, with all his meanness and skulking cunning, is the progenitor of man’s friend, the dog.

They belong to the same family, their breeding habits are alike, and the wolf is as surely the father of the dog, as was brute man, the cave dweller, the ancestor of the highly civilized creature we now know.

In the case of the man it has taken untold ages to bring about the change, and so it has in the case of the dog. When in the dark ages the brute man crouched over his campfire, gazing fearfully into the darkness about him, encompassed by superstition and ignorance, the gray wolf hung upon the outskirts of his campfire.

This man creature, that ran upon two legs instead of four, who had such strange power over fire and water, and over the forces of nature and the wild kindred, fascinated and drew him with a terrible power.

Try as he would he could not keep away from him. Often this man creature wounded him with his sharp stick. He also poisoned the wolf pack, but still they could not be driven away, for it was an unwritten law of nature that some day they should be inseparable.

So the wolf skulked upon the trail of the primitive man, until the famine, or the cold, or some other stern necessity brought them together.

Indians, even now in the far north, often take the wolf whelps from the den and play with them, and they refer to the wolf as “Grandfather’s dog,” showing that they understand the gradual evolution of the dog. You can better understand this if you visit any of their villages where the dogs even now are little more than partly domesticated wolves, wolfish in habits, and looks. Such is the Husky, the famous team dog of the frozen north, without whose help the wealth of the Klondyke and other remote places could hardly have been brought to the outside world.

The collie, which is one of the most faithful and lovable of the dog kind, is not so far removed from a wolf, and it is very easy for him to slip back to his wolf ancestry. There are many instances on record where collies have gone back to the wild and mated and run with the gray pack. Put a collie pup into a wolf den with a litter of wolf whelps and the old wolf will suckle him as her own. He will be brought up as a young wolf; will learn to hunt in the pack, and to stalk his game like a veritable wolf. Of course he will not be as fierce as his wolf brother, and he will still retain certain dog characteristics, but he will pass for a wolf in most particulars, while in two or three generations he will be a veritable wolf.

When we consider all the varieties of dogs ranging from the great Dane of nearly two hundred pounds weight, to the smallest toy dog coming from Japan, this statement that all dogs are descended from wolves seems almost incredible, but all this change has been wrought by man himself. Breeding and selection for certain qualities have been the method by means of which he has attained such varied results.

Climate, and the use to which the dog has been put has also played its part. Nature always adapts her creatures to their surroundings, and the dog is no exception to this rule. He has been molded like all of nature’s other creatures. Where he needed long hair to shield him from the cold he has been given a long, thick coat, and where he could not bear a coat because of the heat it has been left off.

Certain types of dogs there are that have become famous all over the world, some for their beauty and others for their usefulness, but usually for both qualities.

Every child is familiar with the St. Bernard dogs and their work in the Alpine passes, saving lost travelers in the terrible storms of those great heights. Perhaps the most famous of all those great dogs was Barry, whose record as a life saver covered a long period of years, and who is credited with saving forty lives.

This is a record that any man might well be proud of, and one that few men have attained.

Equally famous, and perhaps even more useful as a helper of man are the Scotch collies and the sheep and cattle dogs of England and Scotland. In countries where wolves are numerous these fine dogs are indispensable, and in some sections it would be impossible to guard the flock without them. The training of a fine sheep dog has become a science, and something that the shepherds take a deal of pride in. In order to encourage the breeding of finely trained dogs, each year in many parts of England and Scotland contests of sheep herding dogs are held. Then great crowds of people from far and near gather and all the fine sheep dogs are brought hither and put through their paces. Finally when all have contested, the judges award the cup or other trophy to the shepherd whose dog has made the best showing. Such an event is finely described in that famous dog story, “Bob, Son of Battle.”

The wolfhounds of Russia, which are taught to run in packs and pull down their wild kindred, and hold them until the men come up are equally famous, if not so useful. But wolves in Russia are considered vermin so these dogs do a good work in helping to exterminate the pest.

The Czar of all the Russias was himself interested in wolf coursing and is reported to have owned the finest pack of wolf dogs in the world.

The Alaskan dog teams are famous throughout the world; not only for the very material service that they render man in traveling over the frozen lands where not even a burrow could travel, but also because of the famous races that are held each year in Alaska.