Quotes About Loyalty

In those days, Lad was the only Sunnybank collie permitted in the dining-room. Whether the family was eating alone or with a roomful of guests, the great collie's place was always on the floor, close to the left of the Master's chair, during meals. This to the stumbling discomfort of the servants, in passing things; but as the servants idolized the dog, there was no complaint.

Nor did he smell any worse, even now, to these humans, than many humans had smelled to Lad's tormented senses, again and again, with their sickening perfumes and tobacco and booze! Lad had borne all that—though he loathed it—for the sake of being near those he loved. Yet when, through no desire of his own, he chanced to be malodorous, they ordered him from them in disgust!

Again and again he used to do this. Lad seemed to enjoy it, for he would stand at grave attention, as though listening to something the coon was confiding to him. "I'm sure he's telling Laddie a secret when he does that," said the Mistress. "Nonsense!" scoffed the Master. "We're not living in fable-land. More likely the pesky coon is hunting Lad's ear for fleas. Likelier still, it's just a senseless game they've invented.

At first I was for taking him back to you, myself. But my wife doesn't want me to. So, as usual, we've compromised by doing what she wants. She wants him to stay right here. Next time, his crazy luck might land him in dog heaven instead of here at Sunnybank. She says she'd rather have a live chum than a dead champion. Maybe she's right. I find she's apt to be.

By the faint light Link could see the dog had not obeyed the order to turn his head. But at the man's tone of compassion the great plumy tail began to thump the ground in feeble response. "H'm!" grunted Link, letting the stone drop to the road, "got nerve, too, ain't you, friend? 'Tain't every cuss that can wag his tail when his leg's bust.

Again and again the tobacco smell on the Master's breath and clothes had sickened the collie; so had the supposedly delicate perfumes used by the Mistress. Yet blithely had Lad endured these affronts to his tortured nostrils, in order to remain close beside these two humans who were his gods.

The dog's plumed tail was smiting the dusty floor of the baggage car with happily resounding thumps as Abner talked to him. The man's voice and intonation were such as an animal likes. The collie licked the calloused hand that stroked his silken head. Mutely, a bond of chumship was established between the dog-lonely man and the ill-treated dog.

Now, as the six rushed in, a silver-and-snow catapult landed among them from nowhere in particular, snarling, snapping, slashing. No longer had Thor any use for the finesse which had been taught to him as part of his education as a herder. His master was down. These grunting devils were pressing in, avidly, to rip him to pieces. It was a moment for stark action.

Sunnybank Gray Dawn outlived all the Little People I have spoken of—except Tippy—in this book. Dawn was the last of the great Sunnybank collies. He died on May 30, 1929, leaving bitter heartaches behind him. Peace to his white soul!)

To a dog, all men are gods. That does not mean they are his won particular gods or that he has any interest in most of them. But they are of the race which he and his ancestors have served and guarded and worshipped since the days when the new earth was covered with vapor and he Neanderthal man tamed the first wolf-cub.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He ain't never been hit, nor yet swore at. An' he don't need to be. Treat him nice, like he's used to bein' treated. An' don't get sore on him if he mopes fer me, jes' at fust. Because he's sure to. Dogs ain't like folks. They got hearts. Folks has only got souls. I guess dogs has the best of it, at that.

He was Sunnybank Lad; eighty-pound collie; tawny and powerful; with absurdly tine white forepaws and with a Soul looking out from his deep-set dark eyes. Chum and housemate he was to two human gods; - a dog, alone of all worshipers, having the privilege of looking on the face of his gods and of communing with them without the medium of priest or of prayer.

Lad was not even consoled by the knowledge that he was guarding the slumbrous house. He was not guarding it. He had not the very remotest idea what it meant to be a watchdog. In all his five months he had never learned that there is unfriendliness in the world; or that there is anything to guard a house against.

But-where in blue blazes did a thoroughbred collie ever pick up that bulldog grip?