Does Your Dog Know The Rules Of Good Manners For Canines?

That the manners of your dog—and mine—have a very definite place in our observance of etiquette, is made plain in this letter from a man: "Won't you," he says, "do something about ill-mannered dogs whose owners look with perfect unconcern when their pets jump over a visitor shedding hairs, muddying clean trousers (or dresses), dropping a slobbery ball on freshly polished shoes, and otherwise making a nuisance of themselves?

"I doubt if there is anything that can be done about the women who coo baby talk to their pets and make blithering idiots of themselves with their too-lavish affection.

Admiration Demanded

"Many otherwise sensible women treat dogs as though they were performers trained for the especial interest of visitors who are expected to admire every trick in these Fidos' routines—from sitting up with a lump of sugar on their noses, to rolling over or 'playing dead." All conversation in the living-room centers around them. At table they go from guest to guest, making believe they are starving for food. If by chance they obey their mistresses and 'go lie down," they are soon up and drooling again at the knees of the visitors.

I love dogs, and have always had one of my own. But I would no more think of letting my dog become an annoyance than I would permit my child to be a little ruffian. It requires patience and persistence to train a dog, just as it does to rear a child. The results, in both instances, are well worth it."

In answer to the last two sentences, I think I would put the situation the other way around— and remind certain most-loving and best-intentioned mothers that every child needs training quite as much as does a dog.

However, my answer to this morning's letter is on the training of dogs—certainly a much less serious undertaking than that of children. But the first exaction in both cases is that of obedience! Whether you go to the extreme of training your dog to such a degree that it: obeys every word spoken, or every wordless gesture on the second, or whether you are merely going to exact that it behave as every dog should —it must obey such words of command as "He down"—"come here"—and when it is out walking, "at heel."

Teaching it tricks is something else again. The most satisfyingly companionable dogs are more often than not those which understand and show obedience to every essential direction and know no tricks at all.

Unappealing

The child who answers "why" when told to "come here" or the dog which, when given a command gives not the slightest evidence of understanding, are equally unappealing to all of us!

One very important point which I have never heard stressed and which I myself once learned to my utter mortification, is that "indoors" to a dog is, of course, a place filled with human scent. Any newly-furnished or newly-built house that has never been lived in by human beings presents an entirely unknown territory to a dog. It does not smell of earth and tree trunks, but very certainly it does not smell of human beings. In other words, he does not recognize "indoors" by its furnishings but by its many indoor "you-must-behave-yourself" smells.

However, if you are in doubt about rating your dog's manners you might notice when you take him to see a friend whether he is greeted, "Come on in old fellow or whether he is looked at with an expression that all too plainly says, "Why do you have to be brought along?"