THE DOG-PRESS The dog-world is well served by those journals devoted to its interests, and it is really wonderful what an amount you can obtain of information which must be expensive to collect, for your penny. If I might hazard a criticism, I should like to see a tabulated form of reports for the wins at dog shows, and the employment of a larger size of type. I do not know whether there are any general grounds for the belief that doglovers have eyes like microscopes, but that is the quality of vision you require to go through some of the reports submitted, and for myself, when I want to read them I always ring up a messenger boy, and charter him for the job. I have had the curiosity to estimate the amount of information squeezed into a single column of one of the leading dog-papers, and I find it contains 1800 names, initials, and abbreviations. The column measured 12×2 inches; if I call it crowded I shall not be exaggerating. Personally, I should be very grateful if it were less so, for it debars me from the pleasure of reading it; and I doubt not others suffer similarly. This brings me to a matter whereon I have received a great number of communications—so many that I should not feel justified in ignoring them. I will quote half a dozen only-or rather those parts of them which are the pith of the complaints without the comments, which are more explanatory than polite : I should like to say that I disapprove of the way some of the papers permit exhibitors to write for them critiques of shows at which they have been exhibiting. The possibility of any owner "cracking up" his dog to the disparagement of a more successful competitor should be rendered impossible, and I fear there are quite too many instances of the practice to be met with. I should like to speak about the critiques of dogs at shows as given in the doggy-papers, which are often written by your ring rivals. Although probably very little notice of these reports is taken by the fancy, still it is the only means the public have of learning about a dog. You cannot expect to get a fair critique from an exhibitor on his successful rival's dog. I consider that the system adopted by some of the canine papers in employing exhibitors as critics of dogs on the bench is unfair, unsportsmanlike, and opens the door to many abuses by which some exhibitors' dogs are praised at the expense of those belonging to other people, who do not enter their dogs to be an object lesson for such a purpose. I do not think a disappointed exhibitor should be allowed to write criticisms on other exhibitors' dogs for publication, as is often done in the dog-papers. I am afraid the reports of dog shows are not what they used to be; in fact to stay at home and read the papers' accounts of the dogs is often very misleading. There are "influences" which sometimes suggest themselves. I wish the dog-papers would encourage the judges themselves to write the critiques, like the Kennel Gazette does. It is rather trying to read the same writers week after week, especially when some of those writers have dogs of their own to mention. There remain two subjects to be touched on, which perhaps do not rightly come within the scope of this chapter, and are yet so pithily put that I must spare space for them. DOG LICENSES either be transferable, or Take a case of a litter March: the following taken out; another in "I consider legislation is required with regard to dog licenses. They should hold good for twelve months. of greyhounds whelped in September a license must be the following January. In March or April the saplings are sold at the Barbican Repository, when a third license is required for the same dog within seven months." QUARANTINE "I consider the quarantine regulations as idiotic and useless. Because a dog can stand on his head and jump through a hoop he is admitted without quarantine, and though supposed to be shut up there is no means of seeing that he is. Wolves, dingos, and jackals are admitted freely without quarantine. All these animals are more liable to rabies than domestic dogs. I frequently buy wolves, and place them in my kennels with the dogs, and they go out for exercise, on a lead, with my hounds. It is also easy to avoid the quarantine, and there are certainly many dogs now in this country (and dogs as large as greyhounds) that have 'avoided' this useless and objectionable regulation." On both these matters, as on those of railway rates. and accommodation, many people have much to say, but my allotted space has come to a close, and I can only briefly indicate that there is room for reform. Vivisection, too, stirs many good dog-lovers to protest against the apathy of the Kennel Club and the dogpress in the laiser faire attitude they have adopted. But this, again, is travelling out of my bounds, though my sympathies are certainly with those who hold that the true dog-fancier should first and foremost be a doglover, and that a world which derives its power and profit from the dog should champion the unprotected and oppressed, and lend its influence to a good and righteous cause. |