i have drawn upon one of our sunnybank collies for the name and the aspect and certain traits of my “treve” book’s hero. the real treve was my chum, and one of the strangest and most beautiful collies i have known.
dog aristocrats have two names; one whereby they are registered in the american kennel club’s immortal studbook and one by which they are known at home. the first of these is called the “pedigree name.” the second is the “kennel name.” few dogs know or answer to their own high-sounding pedigree names. in speaking to them their kennel names alone are used.
for example, my grand old bruce’s pedigree name was sunnybank goldsmith;—a term that meant nothing to him. my champion sunnybank sigurdson (greatest of treve’s sons), responds only to the name of “squire.” sunnybank lochinvar is “roy.”
206treve’s pedigree name was “sunnybank sigurd.” and in time he won his right to the hard-sought and harder-earned prefix of “champion”;—the supreme crown of dogdom.
we named him sigurd—the mistress and i—in honour of the collie of katharine lee bates; a dog made famous the world over by his owner’s exquisite book, “sigurd, our golden collie.”
but here difficulties set in.
it is all very well to shout “sigurd!” to a collie when he is the only dog in sight. but when there is a rackety and swirling and excited throng of them, the call of “sigurd!” has an unlucky sibilant resemblance to the exhortation, “sic ’im!” and misunderstandings—not to say strife—are prone to follow. so we sought a one-syllable kennel name for our golden collie pup. my english superintendent, robert friend, suggested “treve.”
the pup took to it at once.
he was red-gold-and-snow of coat; a big slender youngster, with the true “look of eagles” in his deepset dark eyes. in those eyes, too, burned an eternal imp of mischief.
i have bred or otherwise acquired hundreds of collies in my time. no two of them were alike. that is the joy of collies. but most of them had certain well-defined collie characteristics in common with their blood-brethren. treve had practically none. he was not like other collies or like a dog of any breed.
gloriously beautiful, madly alive in every inch of him, he combined the widest and most irreconcilable range of traits.
for him there were but three people on earth;—the mistress, myself and robert friend. to us he gave complete 207allegiance, if in queer form. the rest of mankind, with one exception—a girl—did not exist, so far as he was concerned; unless the rest of mankind undertook to speak to him or to pat him. then, instantly, such familiarity was rewarded by a murderous growl and a most terrifying bite.
the bite was delivered with a frightful show of ferocity. and it had not the force to crush the wing of a fly.
strangers, assailed thus, were startled. some were frankly scared. they would stare down in amaze at the bitten surface, marvelling that there was neither blood nor teeth-mark nor pain. for the attack always had an appearance of man-eating fury.
treve would allow the mistress to pat him—in moderation. but if i touched him, in friendliness, he would toss his beautiful head and dart out of reach, barking angrily back at me. it was the same when robert tried to pet him.
once or twice a day he would come up to me, laying his head across my arm or knee; growling with the utmost vehemence and gnawing at my sleeve for a minute at a time. i gather that this was a form of affection. he did it to nobody else.
also, when i went to town for the day, he would mope around for awhile; then would take my cap from the hall table and carry it into my study. all day long he would lie there, one paw on the cap, and growl fierce menace to all who ventured near. on my return home at night, he gave me scarcely a glance and drew disgustedly away as usual when i held out my hand to pat him.
in the evenings, on the porch or in front of the living room fire, he would stroll unconcernedly about until he made sure i was not noticing. then he would curl himself 208on the floor in front of me, pressing his furry body close to my ankles; and would lie there for hours.
the mistress alone he forbore to bite. he loved her. but she was a grievous disappointment to him. from the first, she saw through his vehement show of ferocity and took it at its true value. try as he would he could not frighten her. try as he would, he could not mask his adoration for her.
again and again he would lie down for a nap at her feet; only to waken presently with a thundrous 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 the comment:
“you’ve had a good sleep, and now you’ve waked up in a nice homicidal rage.”
failing to alarm her, the dog would look sheepishly at the laughing face and then cuddle down again at her feet to be petted.
there was another side to his play of indifference and of wrath. true, he would toss his head and back away, barking, when robert or myself tried to pat him. but at the quietly spoken word, “treve!”, he would come straight up to us and, if need be, stand statue-like for an hour at a time, while he was groomed or otherwise handled.
in brief, he was the naughtiest and at the same time the most unfailingly obedient dog i have owned. no matter how far away he might be, the single voicing of his name would bring him to me in a swirling rush.
in the show-ring he was a problem. at times he showed as proudly and as spectacularly as any attitude-striking tragedian. again, if he did not chance to like his surroundings or if the ring-side crowd displeased him, he prepared to loaf in slovenly fashion through his paces on the block and in the parade. at such times the showing 209of treve became as much an art as is the guiding of a temperamental race-horse to victory. it called for tact; even for trickery.
in the first place, during these fits of ill-humour, he would start around the ring, in the preliminary parade, with his tail arched high over his back; although he knew, as well as did i, that a collie’s tail should be carried low, in the ring.
i commanded: “tail down!” down would come the tail. but at the same time would come a savage growl and a sensational snap at my wrist. the spectators pointed out to one another the incurably fierce collie. fellow-exhibitors in the ring would edge away. the judge—if he were an outsider—would eye treve with strong apprehension.
it was the same when i whispered, “foot out!” as he deliberately turned one white front toe inward in coming to a halt on the judging block. a similar snarl and feather-light snap followed the command.
the worst part of the ordeal came when the judge began to “go over” him with expert hands, to test the levelness of his mouth, the spring of his ribs, his general soundness and the texture of his coat. an exhibitor is not supposed to speak to a judge in the ring except to answer a question. but if the judge were inspecting treve for the first time, i used to mumble conciliatingly, the while:
“he’s only in play, judge. the dog’s perfectly gentle.”
this, as treve resented the stranger’s handling, by growl-fringed bites at the nearest part of the judicial anatomy.
a savage dog does not make a hit with the average judge. there is scant joyance in being chewed, in the pursuit of one’s judging-duties. yet, as a rule, judges took 210my word as to treve’s gentleness; especially after one sample of his biteless biting. said vinton breese, the famed “all-rounder” dog-judge, after an interstate show:
“i feel slighted. sigurd forgot to bite me to-day. it’s the first time.”
the mistress made up a little song, in which treve’s name occurred oftener than almost all its other words. treve was inordinately proud of this song. he would stand, growling softly, with his head on his side, for an indefinite time, listening to her sing it. he used to lure her into chanting this super-personal ditty by trotting to the piano and then running back to her.
nature intended him for a staunch, clever, implicitly obedient, gentle collie, without a single bad trait, and possessed of rare sweetness. he tried his best to make himself thoroughly mean and savage and treacherous. he met with pitifully poor success in his chosen rôle. the sweetness and the obedient gentleness stuck forth, past all his best efforts to mask them in ferocity.
once, when he bit with overmuch unction at a guest who tried to pat him, i spoke sharply to him and emphasised my rebuke by a slight slap on the shoulder. the dog was heart-broken. crouching at my feet, his head on my boot, he sobbed exactly like a frightened child. he spent hours trying pitifully to make friends with me again.
it was so when his snarl and his nip at the legs of one of the other dogs led to warlike retaliation. at once treve would rush to me for protection and for comfort. from the safe haven of my knees he would hurl threats at his assailant and defy him to carry the quarrel further. there was no fight in him. at the same time there was no taint of cowardice. he bore pain or discomfort or real danger unflinchingly.
211one of his chief joys was to ransack the garage and stables for sponges and rags which were stored there for cleaning the cars. these he would carry, one by one, to the long grass or to the lake, and deposit them there. when the men hid these choice playthings out of his way he would stand on his hindlegs and explore the shelves and low beam-corners in search of them; never resting till he found one or more to bear off.
he would lug away porch cushions and carelessly-deserted hats and wraps, and deposit them in all sorts of impossible places; never by any chance bringing them back.
from puppyhood, he did not once eat a whole meal of his own accord. always he must be fed by hand. even then he would not touch any food but cooked meat.
normally, the solution to this would have been to let him go hungry until he was ready to eat. but a valuable show-and-stud collie cannot be allowed to become a skeleton and lifeless for lack of food, any more than a winning race-horse can be permitted to starve away his strength and speed.
treve’s daily pound-and-a-half of broiled chuck steak was cut in small pieces and set before him on a plate. then began the eternal task of making him eat it. did we turn our backs on him for a single minute—the food had vanished when next we looked.
but it had not vanished down treve’s dainty throat. casual search revealed every missing morsel of meat shoved neatly out of sight under the edges of the plate or else hidden in the grass or under nearby boards or handfuls of straw.
this daily meal was a game. treve enjoyed it immensely. not being blessed with patience, i abhorred it. so robert friend took the duty of feeding him. at sound of robert’s distant knife, whetted to cut up the 212meat, treve would come flying to the hammock where i sat writing. at a bound he was in my lap, all fours and all fur—the entire sixty pounds of him—and with his head thrust under one of the hammock cushions.
thence, at robert’s call, and at my own exhortation, he would come forth with mincing reluctance and approach the tempting dish of broiled steak. looking coldly upon the food, he would lie down. to all of robert’s allurements to eat, the dog turned a deaf ear. once in a blue moon, he consented to swallow the steak, piece by piece, if robert would feed it to him by hand. oftener it was necessary to call on wolf to act as stimulant to appetite.
"then i’ll give it to wolf,“ robert would threaten. ”wolf!"
treve got to his feet with head lowered and teeth bared. robert called wolf, who came lazily to play his part in the daily game for a guerdon of one piece of the meat.
six feet away from the dish, wolf paused. but his work was done. growling, barking, roaring, treve attacked the dish; snatching up and bolting one morsel of meat at a time. between every two bites he bellowed threats and insults at the placidly watching wolf,—wolf who could thrash his weight in tigers and who, after lad and bruce died, was the acknowledged king of all the place’s dogs.
in this way, mouthful by mouthful and with an accompaniment of raging noise that could be heard across the lake, treve disposed of his dinner.
yes, it was a silly thing to humour him in the game. but there was no other method of making him eat the food on which depended his continued show-form and his dynamite vitality. when it came to giving him his two raw eggs a day, there was nothing to that but forcible feeding. 213in solid cash prizes and in fees, treve paid back, by many hundred per cent., the high cost of his food.
when he was little more than a puppy, he fell dangerously ill with some kind of heart trouble. dr. hopper said he must have medicine every half hour, day and night, until he should be better. i sat up with him for two nights.
i got little enough work done, between times, on those two nights. the suffering dog, lay on a rug beside my study desk. but he was uneasy and wanted to be talked to. he was in too much pain to go to sleep. in a corner of my study was a tin biscuit box, which i kept filled with animal crackers, as occasional titbits for the collies. every now and then, during our two-night vigil, i took an animal cracker from the box and fed it to treve.
by the second night he was having a beautiful time. i was not.
the study seemed to him a most delightful place. forthwith he adopted it as his lair. by the third morning he was out of danger and indeed was practically well again. but he had acquired the study-habit; a habit which lasted throughout his short life.
from that time on, it was treve’s study; not mine. the tin cracker box became his treasure chest; a thing to be guarded as jealously as ever was the nibelungen hoard or the koh-i-noor.
if he chanced to be lying in any other room, and a dog unconsciously walked between him and the study, treve bounded up from the soundest sleep and rushed growlingly to the study door, whence he snarled defiance at the possible intruder. if he were in the study and another dog ventured near, treve’s teeth were bared and treve’s fore-feet were planted firmly atop the tin box; as he ordered away the potential despoiler of his hoard.
214no human, save only the mistress and myself, might enter the study unchallenged. grudgingly, treve conceded her right and mine to be there. but a rush at the ankles of any one else discouraged ingress. i remember my daughter stopped in there one day to speak to me; on her way for a swim. as the bathing-dressed figure appeared on the threshold, treve made a snarling rush for it. alternately and vehemently he bit both bare ankles.
“i wish he wouldn’t do that,” complained my daughter, annoyed. “he tickles so when he bites!”
no expert trainer has worked more skilfully and tirelessly over a derby winner than did robert friend over that dog’s shimmering red-gold coat. for an hour or more every day, he groomed treve, until the burnished fur stood out like a circassian beauty’s coiffure and glowed like molten gold. the dog stood moveless throughout the long and tedious process; except when he obeyed the order to turn to one side or the other or to lift his head or to put up his paws for a brushing of the silken sleeve-ruffles.
it was robert, too, who hit on the scheme which gave treve his last show-victory; when the collie already had won fourteen of the needful fifteen points which should make him a champion of record.
perhaps you think it is easy to pilot even the best of dogs through the gruelling ordeals that go to make up those fifteen points. well, it is not.
many breeders take their dogs on the various show-circuits, keeping them on the bench for three days at a time; and then, week after week, shipping them in stuffy crates from town to town, from show to show. in this way, the championship points sometimes pile up with reasonable speed;—and sometimes never at all. (sometimes, too, the luckless dog is found dead in his crate, on 215arriving at the show-hall. oftener he catches distemper and dies in more painful and leisurely fashion.)
i am too foolishly mush-hearted to inflict such torture on any of our sunnybank collies. i never take my dogs to a show that cannot be reached by comfortable motor ride within two or three hours at most; nor to any show whence they cannot return home at the end of a single day. thus, championship points mount up more slowly at sunnybank than at some other kennels. but thus, too, our dogs, for the most part, stay alive and in splendid health. i sleep the sounder at night, for knowing my collie chums are not in misery in some distemper-tainted dogshow-building.
in like manner, it is a fixed rule with us never to ship a sunnybank puppy anywhere by express to a purchaser people must come here in person and take home the pups they buy from me. buyers have motored to sunnybank for pups from maine and ohio and even from california.
these scruples of mine have earned me the good-natured guying of more sensible collie breeders.
well, treve had picked up fourteen of the fifteen points needed to complete his championship. the last worthwhile show of the spring season—within motor distance—was at noble, pa., on june 10, 1922. incidentally, june 10, 1922, was treve’s third birthday. his wonderful coat was at the climax of its shining fulness. by autumn he would be “out of coat”; and an out-of-coat collie stands small chance of winning.
so robert and i drove over to noble with him.
the day was stewingly hot; the drive was long. show-goers crowded around the splendid dog before the judging began. bit by bit, treve’s nerves began to fray. we kept him off his bench and in the shade, and we did what we could to steer admirers away from him. but it was 216no use. by the time the collie division was called into the tented ring, treve was profoundly unhappy and cranky.
he slouched in, with no more “form” to him than a plough horse. with the rest of his class (“open, sable-and-white”), he went through the parade. judge cooper called the contestants one by one up to the block; treve last of all. my best efforts could not rouse the dog from his sullen apathy.
it was then that robert friend played his trump card. standing just outside the ring, among the jam of spectators, he called excitedly:
“wolf! i’ll give it to wolf!”
i don’t know what the other spectators thought of this outburst. but i know the effect it had on treve.
in a flash the great dog was alert and tense; his tulip ears up, his whole body at attention, the look of eagles in his eyes as he scanned the ringside for a glimpse of his friend, wolf.
judge cooper took one long look at him. then, without so much as laying a hand on the magnificently-showing treve, he awarded him the blue ribbon in his class.
i had sense enough to take the dog into one corner and to keep him there, quieting and steadying him until the winners’ class was called. as i led him into the ring, then, to compete with the other classes’ blue ribboners, robert called once more to the absent wolf. again the trick served. the collie moved and stood as if galvanised into sparkling life.
cooper handed me the winners’ rosette; the rosette whose acquisition made treve a champion of record!
it was only about a year ago. in that little handful of time, the judge who made him a champion—the new-made champion himself—the dog whose name roused him from 217his apathy in the ring—all three are dead. i don’t think a white sportsman like cooper would mind my linking his name with two such supreme collies, in this word of necrology. cooper—treve—wolf!
(there’s lots of room in this old earth of ours for the digging of graves, isn’t there?)
home we came with our champion—champion sunnybank sigurd—who displayed so little championship dignity that, an hour after our return to the place, he lifted my brand new panama hat daintily from the hall-table, carried it forth from the house with a loving tenderness; laid it to rest in a patch of lakeside mud; and then rolled on it.
i was too elated over our triumph to scold him for the costly sacrilege. i am glad now that i didn’t. for a scolding or a single harsh word ever reduced him to utter heartbreak.
and so for a while, at the place, our golden champion continued to revel in the gay zest of life.
he was the livest dog i have known. wolf alone was his chum among all the sunnybank collies. wolf alone, with his mighty heart and vast wisdom and his elfin sense of fun and his love for frolic. wolf and treve used to play a complicated game whose chief move consisted of a sweeping breakneck gallop, for perhaps a half-mile, to the accompaniment of a fanfare of barking. across the green lawns they would flash, like red-gold meteors; and at a pace none of their fleet-footed brethren could maintain.
one morning they started as usual on this whirlwind dash. but at the end of the first few yards, treve swayed in his flying stride, faltered to a stop and came slowly back to me. he thrust his muzzle into my cupped hand—for 218the first time in his undemonstrative life—then stood wearily beside me.
a strange transformation had come over him. the best way i can describe it is to say that the glowing inward fire which always had seemed to shine through him—even to the flaming bright mass of coat—was gone. he was all at once old and sedate and massive; a dog of elderly dignity—a dignity oddly majestic. the mischief imp had fled from his eyes; the sheen and sunlight had vanished from his coat. he had ceased to be treve.
i sent in a rush for the nearest good vet. the doctor examined the invalid with all the skilled attention due a dog whose cash value runs into four figures. then he gave verdict.
it was the heart;—the heart that had been flighty in puppyhood days, but which two competent vets had since pronounced as sound as the traditional bell.
for a day longer the collie lived;—at least a gravely gentle and majestic collie lived in the marvellous body that had been treve’s. he did not suffer—or so the doctor told us—and he was content to stay very close to me; his paw or his head on my foot.
at last, stretching himself drowsily to sleep, he died.
it seemed impossible that such a swirl of glad life and mischief and beauty could have been wiped out in twenty-four little hours.
not for our virtues nor for our general worthiness are we remembered wistfully by those who stay on. not for our sterling qualities are we cruelly missed when missing is futile. worthiness, in its death, does not leave behind it the grinding heartache that comes at memory of some lovably naughty or mischievous or delightfully perverse trait.
219treve’s entertaining badnesses had woven themselves into the very life of the place. their passing left a keen hurt. the more so because, under them, lay bedrock of staunch loyalty and gentleness.
i have not the skill to paint our eccentrically lovable chum’s word picture, except in this clumsily written sketch. if i were to attempt to make a whole book of him, the result would be a daub.
but i have tried at least to make his name remembered by a few readers; by giving it to the hero of the “treve” collection of stories. perhaps some one, reading, may like the name, even if not the stories, and may call his or her next collie, “treve”; in memory of a gallant dog that was dear to sunnybank.
we buried him in the woods, near the house, here. a granite boulder serves as his headstone.
alongside that boulder, a few days ago, we buried the mistress’s hero collie, wolf; close to his old-time playmate, treve.
perhaps you may care to hear a word or two of wolf’s plucky death. some of you have read his adventures in my other dog stories. more of you read of his passing. for nearly every newspaper in america printed a long account of it.
it is an account worth reading and rereading; as is every tale of clean courage. i am going to quote part of the finely-written story that appeared in the new york times of june 28, 1923; a story far beyond power of mine to improve on or to equal:
"wolf, son of lad, is dead. the shaggy collie, with the eyes that understood and the friendly tail, made famous in the stories of albert payson terhune, died like a thoroughbred. 220so when wolf joined his father, in the canine beyond, last sunday night, there was no hanging of heads.
"wolf died a hero. but yesterday the level lawns of sunnybank, the terhune place at pompton lakes, n. j., seemed empty and the big house was curiously quiet. true, other collies were there; but so, too, was the big boulder out in the woods with just ‘wolf’ graven across it.
"ten years ago, when thousands of readers were following lad’s career as told by his owner, mr. terhune, an interesting event took place at sunnybank. of all the puppies that had or have come to sunnybank, that group of newcomers was the most mischievous. admittedly, lad was properly proud, but readers will remember his occasional misgivings about one of the pups. the cause of parental concern was wolf. he was a good puppy, you know, but a trifle boisterous; maybe—yes, he was, the littlest bit inclined to wildness.
"in 1918 lad passed on; and the whole country mourned his departure. wolf succeeded his famous father in the stories of mr. terhune. the son had long since abandoned his harum-scarum ways and had developed into a model member of the terhune dog circle. wolf was the property and the pet of mrs. terhune.
"he became the cleverest of all the collies. one could talk to wolf and get understanding and no back talk. one could depend on wolf and get full loyalty. one could like wolf and say so; and the soft cool nose would come poking around and the tail would begin to wag till it seemed as if wolf would wag himself off his feet.
"wolf constituted himself warden of the sunnybank lawns and custodian of the driveways. when motoring parties came in and endangered the lives of the puppies playing about the driveways, wolf, at the first sound of 221the motor, would dash importantly down into the drive and would herd or chase every puppy out of harm’s way.
"each evening it was the habit of wolf to saunter off on a long ‘walk.’ three evenings ago he rambled away and—
"down in the darkness at the railroad station some folk were waiting to see the stroudsburg express flash by. it was a few minutes late. a nondescript dog, with a hunted, homeless droop to his tail, trotted onto the tracks.
"far down the line there came the warning screech of the express. the canine tramp didn’t pay any attention to it, but sat down to scratch at a flea.
"the headlight of the express shot a beam glistening along the rails. wolf saw the dog and the danger. with a bark and a snap, the son of lad thrust the stranger off the track and drove him to safety.
“the express was whistling, for a crossing, far past the station, when they picked up what was wolf and started for the terhune home.”
all dogs die too soon. many humans don’t die soon enough. a dog is only a dog. and a dog is too gorgeously normal, and wholesome to be made ridiculous in death by his owner’s sloppy sentimentality.
the stories of one’s dogs, like the recital of one’s dreams, are of no special interest to others. perhaps i have talked overlong about these two collie chums of ours. belatedly, i ask your forgiveness if i have bored you.
albert payson terhune.
“sunnybank,”
pompton lakes,
new jersey.
.
