Quotes from Albert Payson Terhune

She was a mixture of the unmixable. Not one expert in eighty could have guessed at her breed or breeds.

Not one of these people—not even the policeman himself—had any evidence that the collie was mad. There are not two really rabid dogs seen at large in New York or in any other city in the course of a year. Yet, at the back of the human throat ever lurks that fool cry of "Mad dog!"—ever ready to leap forth into shouted words at the faintest provocation

Oblivious of Harlow, for whom they had all a dog's amusedly tolerant contempt for an inefficient human leader, the quintet swept away on the track.

Would Man but deign to serve his God as they, Millennium must dawn within the year.

He was hailed with much cordiality by the group. The maid of honor, who was an old friend of Laddie's, unlimbered a candy box from under her arm and offered the collie a large and mushy and delectable bonbon. With outward gravity, but inward bliss, he accepted the gift daintily, and fell to munching it with infinite epicurean relish. Sweets were taboo for dogs, at The Place, as a rule. Lad loved them the more for their rarity.

wished he might carry it into the enemies' own country. But his god was lying helpless at his feet and making queer sounds of distress. The dog's place was here. The joy of battle must be foregone.

Then, his odd collie sense had told him that for some reason this staggering and hiccuping creature was not the master whom he knew and loved. This man was strangely different from the Link Ferris whom Chum knew. Puzzled, the dog had halted and had stood irresolute.

He knew, as by revelation, that his adoring dog now shunned him because Link was drunk. From the first, Chum's look of utter worship and his eagerly happy obedience had been a joy to Link. The subtly complete change in his worshiper's demeanor jarred sharply on the man's raw nerves. He felt vaguely unclean—shamed.

A dog is not at his best, in mind or in body, until he has passed his third year. And, before he nears the ten-year mark, he has begun to decline. At twelve or thirteen, he is as decrepit as is the average human of seventy. And not one dog in a hundred can be expected to live to fourteen. (Lad, by some miracle, was destined to endure past his own sixteenth birthday; a record seldom equaled among his race.)

The clergyman had held field services in France when the shells were dropping all about his khaki congregation. Thus, the advent of a huge and muddily shaggy dog did not throw him off his mental balance in the mere reading of a marriage service.

Gently, the Master called him downstairs and across the living room, and put him out of the house. For, after all, a shaggy eighty-pound dog is an inconvenience stretched across a sickroom doorsill. Three minutes later, Lad had made his way through an open window into the cellar and thence upstairs; and was stretched out, head between paws, at the threshold of the Mistress' room.

Perhaps the stout little heart quivered just a bit, if memory went back to his home kennel and to the rowdy throng of brothers and sisters and most of all, to the soft furry mother against whose side he had nestled every night since he was born. But if so, Lad was too valiant to show homesickness by so much as a whimper. And, assuredly, this House of Peace was infinitely better than the miserable crate wherein he had spent twenty horrible and jouncing and smelly and noisy hours.

Just the same," interposed the Master, "we've been stung. I wanted a dog to guard the Place and to be a menace to burglars and all that sort of thing. And they've sent us a Teddy-Bear. I think I'll ship him back and get a grown one. What sort of use is—?" "He is going to be all those things," eagerly prophesied the Mistress. "And a hundred more. See how he loves to have me pet him! And, look—he's learned, already, to shake hands; and

He would not confess, even to himself, that age was beginning to hamper him so cruelly. And he sought to do all the things he had once done—if the Mistress or the Master were looking. But when he was alone, or with the other dogs, he spared himself every needless step. And he slept a great deal.

The only place that's better than Sunnybank," he mused, his hand on Lad's silken head, his eyes ceasing to rove over his moonlit acres and resting happily on his wife—"the only place that's better than Sunnybank is heaven. And that's only because in heaven, according to the Bible, 'there is no marrying or giving in marriage.

People form their real friendships before they're twenty-five,—generally, before they are twenty,—I think. Up to that time we're trustful and hideously disinterested; and after that age we get to liking people for the amount of amusement or profit or inspiration we can drag from them. But, up to then, it's friendship because—well, just because it's friendship. That's the way it was with us, anyhow.

I do not pretend to say whether or not dogs have a language of their own. Personally, I think they have, and a very comprehensive one, too. But I cannot prove it. No dog student, however, will deny that two dogs communicate their wishes to each other in some way by (or during) the swift contact of noses.

The dog alone, Link spelled out, has pierced the vast barrier between humans and other beasts, and has ranged himself, willingly and joyously, on the side of Man. For Man's sake the dog will not only starve and suffer and lay down his life, but will betray his fellow quadrupeds. Man is the dog's god.

Win without boasting. Lose without excuse.

Any man with money to make the purchase may become a dog's owner. But no man --spend he ever so much coin and food and tact in the effort-- may become a dog's Master without consent of the dog. Do you get the difference? And he whom a dog once unreservedly accepts as Master is forever that dog's God.

Soon or late, every dog's master's memory becomes a graveyard; peopled by wistful little furry ghosts that creep back unbidden, at times, to a semblance of their olden lives.

This is the magic secret of dog training -- lose control over yourself and you at once lose control of the dog. Your strongest and most irresistible weapon is iron patience.

The Master talked of buying a whalebone-and-steel-and-snow bull terrier, or a more formidable if more greedy Great Dane. But the Mistress wanted a collie. So they compromised by getting the collie.

Again and again he would lie down at her feet; only to waken presently with a thunderous growl and a snarl, and with a lunge of bared teeth at her caressing hand. The hand would continue to caress; and his show of fury was met with a laugh and with a comment: "You've had a good sleep, and now you've waked up in a nice homicidal rage.