Final Thoughts on the Dog-friend of thy Heart

Over a hundred years ago, a wandering naturalist (Goodrich, 1859) quoted to another traveler (Burchell, Travels in Africa) on the fidelity and value of the dog, man’s best friend:

“We felt a confidence that no danger could approach us at night without being announced by their barking…often in the middle of the night, when all my people have been fast asleep around the fire, have I stood to contemplate these faithful animals lying by their side, and have learned to esteem them for their social esteem of mankind. When wandering over pathless deserts, oppressed with vexation and distress at the conduct of my own men, I have turned to these as my only friends, and felt how much inferior to them was man when actuated only selfish views.

We must not mistake the nature of the case: it is not because we train him to our use, and have made choice of him in preference to other animals, but because this particular species feels a natural desire to be useful to man, and, from spontaneous impulse, attaches itself to him…everywhere it is the dog only that takes delight in associating with us in sharing our abode; he is even jealous that our attention should be bestowed on him alone; it is he who knows us personally, watches for us, and warns us of danger.

It is impossible for the naturalist when taking a survey of the whole animal creation, not to feel a conviction that his friendship between two creatures so different from each other must be the result of the laws of nature; nor can the humane and feeling mind avoid the belief that kindness to those animals from which he derives continued and essential assistance, is the part of his moral duty.”

Then Goodrich went on, in his own words to say:

“It may be truly said that the dog is only animal capable of disinterested affection. The horse neighs that he may be fed; he enjoys the chase and feels emulation, and thus shares in some of our pleasures; but the dog desires to follow us, and be useful to us as a friend. He sacrifices his appetite and his liberty for our benefit. Queen Mary’s lap dog followed her to the scaffold, caressed the body when her head was cut off, and when forcibly withdrawn, pined away and died.

The dog is as true in his affections in the midst of poverty as in abundance. He dines cheerfully and thankfully on a bone with pauper master, as on the ruddy roast beef of the lord of the manor. The instance of a cur that followed the body of his master, a poor tailor, to the churchyard of St Olave, in London, and refusing to comforted, after a few weeks wasted away and perished, is familiar to all readers. There are innumerable instances of this sort. One of them, that of a young man who lost his life by falling from one of the precipices of the Helvellyn Mountains, and who for three months was guarded by his faithful dog-wasted at last to a skeleton-was even put into immortal verse by Scott.”