Jock of the Bushveld

by Percy Fitzpatrick

  Snarley came to a bad end: his master shot him as he was running off with a ham. He was a full-grown dog when he came to our camp and too old to learn principles and good manners.

  Dogs are like people: what they learn when they are young, whether of good or of evil, is not readily forgotten. I began early with Jock and – remembering what Rocky had said – tried to help him. It is little use punishing a dog for stealing if you take no trouble about feeding him. That is very rough on the dog; he has to find out slowly and by himself what he may take and what he may not. Sometimes he leaves what he was meant to take and goes hungry, and sometimes takes what was not intended for him and gets a thrashing. That is not fair. You cannot expect to have a good dog, and one that will understand you, if you treat him in that way. Some men teach their dogs not to take food from anyone but themselves. One day when we were talking about training dogs, Ted told one of the others to open Jess’s mouth and put a piece of meat in it, he undertaking not to say a word and not even to look at her. The meat was put in her mouth and her jaws were shut tight on it; but the instant she was free she dropped it, walked round to the other side of Ted and sat close up to him. He waited for a minute or so and, without so much as a glance at her, said quietly ‘All right.’ She was back again in a second and with one hungry bite bolted the lump of meat.

  I taught Jock not to touch food in camp until he was told to ‘take it’. The lesson began when he got his saucer of porridge in the morning; and he must have thought it cruel to have that put in front of him and then be held back or tapped with a finger on the nose each time he tried to dive into it. At first he struggled and fought to get at it; then he tried to back away and dodge round the other side; then he became dazed and, thinking it was not for him at all, wanted to walk off and have nothing more to do with it. In a few days, however, I got him to lie still and take it only when I patted him and pushed him towards it; and in a very little time he got on so well that I could put his food down without saying anything and let him wait for permission. He would lie down with his head on his paws and his nose right up against the saucer, so as to lose no time when the order came; but he would not touch it until he heard ‘Take it.’ He never moved his head, but his little browny dark eyes, full of childlike eagerness, used to be turned up sideways and fixed on mine. I believe he watched my lips; he was so quick to obey the order when it came.

  When he grew up and had learned his lessons there was no need for these exercises. He got to understand me so well that, if I nodded or moved my hand in a way that meant ‘all right’, he would go ahead: by that time too he was dignified and patient; and it was only in his puppy hood that he used to crouch up close to his food and tremble with impatience and excitement.

  There was one lesson that he hated most of all. I used to balance a piece of meat on his nose and make him keep it there until the word to take it came. Time after time he would close his eyes as if the sight of the meat was more than he could bear, and his mouth would water so from the savoury smell that long streels of dribble would hang down on either side.

  It seems unnecessary and even cruel to tantalise a dog in that way; but it was not: it was education; and it was true kindness. It taught him to understand his master and to be obedient, patient and observant; it taught him not to steal; it saved him from much sickness, and perhaps death, by teaching him not to feed on anything he could find; it taught him manners and made it possible for him to live with his master and be treated like a friend.

  Good feeding, good care and plenty of exercise soon began to make a great change in Jock. He ceased to look like a beetle – grew bigger everywhere, not only in one part as he had done at first; his neck grew thick and strong, and his legs straightened up and filled out with muscle. The others, seeing him every day, were slow to notice these things, but my sand had been changed into gold long ago, and they always said I could not see anything wrong in Jock.

  There was one other change which came more slowly and seemed to me much more wonderful. After his morning feed, if there was nothing to do, he used to go to sleep in some shady place, and I remember well one day watching him as he lay. His bit of shade had moved away and left him in the bright sunshine; and as he breathed and his ribs rose and fell, the tips of the hairs on his side and back caught the sunlight and shone like polished gold, and the wavy dark lines seemed more distinct and darker, but still very soft. In fact, I was astonished to see that in a certain light Jock looked quite handsome. That was the first time I noticed the change in colour; and it made me remember two things. The first was what the other fellows had said the day Billy gave up his pup, ‘You can’t tell how a puppy will turn out: even his colour changes’; and the second was a remark made by an old hunter who had offered to buy Jock – the real meaning of which I did not understand at the time.

  ‘The best dog I ever owned was a golden brindle/ said the old man thoughtfully, after I had laughed at the idea of selling my dog. I had got so used to thinking that he was only a faded wishy-washy edition of Jess that the idea of his colour changing did not occur to me then, and I never suspected that the old man could see how he would turn out; but the touch of sunlight opened my eyes that day, and after than whenever I looked at Jock the words ‘golden brindle’ came back to my mind, and I pictured him as he was going to be – and as he really did grow up – having a coat like burnished gold with soft, dark, wavy brindles in it and that snow-white V on his chest.

  Jock had many things to learn besides the lessons he got from me – the lessons of experience which nobody could teach him. When he was six months old – just old enough, if he had lived in a town, to chase a cat and make a noise – he knew many things that respectable puppies of twice his age who stay at home never get a chance of learning.

  On trek there were always new places to see, new roads to travel and new things to examine, tackle or avoid. He learned something fresh almost every day: he learned, for instance, that, although it was shady and cool under the waggon, it was not good enough to lie in the wheel track, not even for the pleasure of feeling the cool iron tyre against your back or head as you slept; and he knew that because one day he had done it and the wheel had gone over his foot, and it might just as easily have been his back or head. Fortunately the sand was soft and his foot was not crushed; but he was very lame for some days and had to travel on the waggon.

  He learned a good deal from Jess: among other things, that it was not necessary to poke his nose up against a snake in order to find out what it was. He knew that Jess would fight anything; and when one day he saw her back hair go up and watched her sheer off the footpath wide into the grass, he did the same; and then when we had shot the snake, both he and Jess came up very very cautiously and sniffed at it, with every hair on their bodies standing up.

  He found out for himself that it was not a good idea to turn a scorpion over with his paw. The vicious little tail with a thorn in it whipped over the scorpion’s back and Jock had such a foot that he must have thought a scorpion worse than two waggons. He was a very sick dog for some days; but after that whenever he saw a thing that he did not understand, he would watch it very carefully from a little way off and notice what it did and what it looked like, before trying experiments.

  So, little by little, Jock got to understand plenty of things that no town dog would ever know, and he got to know – just as some people do – by what we call instinct, whether a thing was dangerous or safe, even though he had never seen anything like it before. That is how he knew that wolves or lions were about – and that they were dangerous – when he heard or scented them, although he had never seen, scented or heard one before to know what sort of animal it might be. You may well wonder how he could tell whether the scent or the cry belonged to a wolf which he must avoid, or to a buck which he might hunt, when he had never seen either a wolf or a buck at the time, but he did know; and he also knew that no dog could safely go outside the ring of the campfires when wolf or lion was about. I have known many town-bred dog
s that could scent them just as well as Jess or Jock could, but having no instinct of danger they went out to see what it was, and of course they never came back.

  I used to take Jock with me everywhere so that he could learn everything that a hunting dog ought to know, and above all things to learn that he was my dog, and to understand all that I wanted to tell him. So while he was still a puppy, whenever he stopped to sniff at something new or to look at something strange, I would show him what it was; but if he stayed behind to explore while I moved on, or if he fell asleep and did not hear me get up from where I had sat down to rest, or went off the track on his own account, I used to hide away from him on top of a rock or up a tree and let him hunt about until he found me.

  At first he used to be quite excited when he missed me, but after a little time he got to know what to do and would sniff along the ground and canter away after me – always finding me quite easily. Even if I climbed a tree to hide from him he would follow my track to the foot of the tree, sniff up the trunk as far as he could reach standing up against it and then peer up into the branches. If he could not see me from one place, he would try another – always with his head tilted a bit on one side. He never barked at these times; but as soon as he saw me, his ears would drop, his mouth open wide with the red tongue lolling out and the stump of a tail would twiggle away to show how pleased he was. Sometimes he would give a few little whimpery grunts: he hardly ever barked; when he did I knew there was something worth looking at.

  Jock was not a quarrelsome dog and he was quick to learn and very obedient, but in one connection I had great difficulty with him for quite a little time. He had a sort of private war with the fowls; and it was due to the same cause as his war with the other puppies: they interfered with him. Now, everyone knows what a fowl is like: it is impudent, inquisitive, selfish, always looking for something to eat and has no principles.

  A friend of mine once told me a story about a dog of his and the trouble he had with fowls. Several of us had been discussing the characters of dogs, and the different emotions they feel and manage to express, and the kind of things they seem to think about. Everyone knows that a dog can feel angry, frightened, pleased and disappointed. Anyone who knows dogs will tell you that they can also feel anxious, hopeful, nervous, inquisitive, surprised, ashamed, interested, sad, loving, jealous and contented – just like human beings.

  We had told many stories illustrating this, when my friend asked the question: ‘Have dogs a sense of humour?’ Now I know that Jock looked very foolish the day he fought the table leg – and a silly old hen made him look just as foolish another day – but that is not quite what my friend meant. On both occasions Jock clearly felt that he had made himself look ridiculous, but he was very far from being amused. The question was: is a dog capable of sufficient thinking to appreciate a simple joke, and is it possible for a dog to feel amused? If Jess had seen Jock bursting to fight the table leg, would she have seen the joke? Well, I certainly did not think so; but he said he was quite certain some dogs have a sense of humour and he had had proof of it.

  He told the story very gravely, but I really do not even now know whether he – well, here it is. He had once owned a savage old watchdog, whose box stood in the backyard where he was kept chained up all day; he used to be fed once a day – in the mornings – and the great plague of his life was the fowls. They ran loose in the yard and picked up food all day, besides getting a really good feed of grain morning and evening; possibly the knowledge of this made the old dog particularly angry when they would come round by ones or twos or dozens trying to steal part of his one meal. Anyhow, he hated them, and whenever he got a chance killed them. The old fowls learned to keep out of his way, and never ventured within his reach unless they were quite sure that he was asleep or lying in his kennel where he could not see them; but there were always new fowls coming, or young ones growing up; and so the war went on.

  One Sunday morning my friend was enjoying a smoke on his back stoep when feeding time came round. The cook took the old dog’s food to him in a high three-legged pot, and my friend, seeing the fowls begin to gather round and wishing to let the old dog have his meal in peace, told the cook to give the fowls a good feed in another part of the yard to draw them off. So the old fellow polished off his food and licked the pot clean, leaving not a drop or a speck behind.

  But fowls are very greedy; they were soon back again wandering about, with their active looking eyes searching everything. The old dog, feeling pretty satisfied with life, picked out a sandy spot in the sunshine, threw himself down full stretch on his side and promptly went to sleep – at peace with all the world. Immediately he did this, out stepped a long-legged athletic looking cockerel and began to advance against the enemy. As he got nearer he slowed down, and looked first with one eye and then with the other, so as to make sure that all was safe, and several times he paused with one foot poised high before deciding to take the next step. My friend was greatly amused to see all the trouble that the fowl was taking to get up to the empty pot and, for the fun of giving the conceited young cockerel a fright, threw a pebble at him. He was so nervous that when the pebble dropped near him, he gave one great bound and tore off flapping and screaming down the yard as if he thought the old dog was after him. The old fellow himself was startled out of his sleep and raised his head to see what the row was about but, as nothing more happened, he lay down again and the cockerel, finding also that it was a false alarm, turned back, not a bit ashamed for another try.

  The cockerel had not seen the old dog lift his head; my friend had, and when he looked again he saw that, although the underneath eye – half buried in the sand – was shut, the top eye was open and was steadily watching the cockerel as he came nearer and nearer to the pot. My friend sat dead still, expecting a rush and another fluttering scramble. At last the cockerel took the final step, craned his neck to the utmost and peered down into the empty pot. The old dog gave two gentle pats with his tail in the sand and, closing his eye, went to sleep again.

  Jock had the same sort of trouble. The fowls tried to steal his food and he would not stand it. His way of dealing with them was not good for their health: before I could teach him not to kill, and before the fowls would learn not to steal, he had finished half a dozen of them, one after another, with just one bite and a shake. He would growl very low as they came up and, without lifting his head from the plate, watch them with his little eyes turning from soft brown to shiny black; and when they came too near and tried to snatch a mouthful – well, one jump, one shake and it was all over.

  In the end he learned to tumble them over and scare their wits out without hurting them; and they learned to give him a very wide berth.

  I used always to keep some fowls with the waggons, partly to have fresh meat if we ran out of game, but mainly to have fresh eggs, which were a very great treat; and as a rule it was only when a hen turned obstinate and would not lay that we ate her. I used to have one old rooster, whose name was Pezulu, and six or eight hens. The hens changed from time to time – as we ate them – but Pezulu remained.

  The fowl coop was carried on top of everything else and it was always left open so that the fowls could go in and out as they liked. In the very beginning of all, of course, the fowls were shut in and fed in the coop for a day or two to teach them where their home was, but it is surprising how quickly a fowl will learn and how it observes things. For instance, the moving of the coop from one waggon to another is not a thing one would expect the fowls to notice, all the waggons being so much alike and having no regular order at the outspans, but they did notice it, and at once. They would first get on to the waggon on which the coop had been, and look about in a puzzled lost kind of way, then walk all over the load apparently searching for it, with heads cocked this way and that, as if a great big coop was a thing that might have been mislaid somewhere; then one after another would jerk out short cackles of protest, indignation and astonishment, and generally make no end of a fuss. It was only whe
n old Pezulu led the way and perched on the coop itself and crowed and called to them that they would get up on to the other waggon.

  Pezulu got his name by accident – in fact, by a misunderstanding. It is a Zulu word meaning ‘up’ or ‘on top’, and when the fowls first joined the waggons and were allowed to wander about at the outspan places, the boys would drive them up when it was time to trek again by cracking their big whips and shouting ‘Pezulu’. In a few days no driving or whip-cracking was necessary; one of the boys would shout ‘Pezulu’ three or four times, and they would all come in and one by one fly and scramble up to the coop. One day, after we had got a new lot of hens, a stranger happened to witness the performance. Old Pezulu was the only one who knew what was meant and, being a terribly fussy nervous old gentleman, came tearing out of the bush making a lot of noise, and scrambled hastily on to the waggon. The stranger, hearing the boys call ‘Pezulu’ and seeing him hurry up so promptly, remarked: ‘How well he knows his name!’ So we called him Pezulu after that.

  Whenever we got new fowls Pezulu became as distracted as a nervous man with a large family trying to find seats in an excursion train. As soon as he saw the oxen being brought up, and before anyone had called for the fowls, he would begin fussing and fuming – trying all sorts of dodges to get the hens up to the waggons. He would crow and cluck-cluck or kip-kip; he would go a few yards towards the waggons and scratch in the ground, pretending to have found something good, and invite them to come and share it; he would get on the disselboom and crow and flap his wings loudly; and finally he would mount on top of the coop and make all sorts of signals to the hens, who took not the least notice of him. As the inspanning went on he would get more and more excited; down he would come again – not flying off, but hopping from ledge to ledge to show them the easy way; and once more on the ground he would scrape and pick and cluck to attract them, and the whole game would be played over again and again. So even with new fowls we had very little trouble, as old Pezulu did most of the teaching.