These dogs are curiously sensitive about their dignity, and sometimes do not recover their elasticity of spirits for several days after having undergone a process of correction. I recollect a singular instance of this sensitiveness displayed by Sambo, in which he also manifested a kind of inferential power wonderfully akin to reason.
One morning, a tumult of dogs in the street drew him to the window, out of which he looked by jumping on a chair, just as a troop of "curs of low degree" tore past after a rather genteel-looking dog with a kettle tied to his tail. They whirled rapidly by in a turmoil of dust, and clink, and cur-dog yelp, but not so rapidly as to prevent Sam from perceiving the terrible degradation to which a gentleman-dog had been subjected. The sight had a visible effect on his spirits, for he immediately became quite depressed as to tail and mind, a condition which influenced him for a day or two, after which he again appeared comparatively cheerful, and took his place in society with his accustomed cautious conviviality. About a month after this, he was seen coming very slowly along a lane which led up to the back of the house,--a course hardly ever taken by him, as he was a parlor-dog, and considered himself entitled to the freedom of the hall-door. Creeping on in the shadow of the wall, he arrived with a very crest-fallen aspect at the kitchen-door, where the cause of his ignominious approach was made manifest to those who were watching him. _He had a kettle tied to his tail_. Now this animal must surely have argued in his own mind, that running away with a tin kettle is a sure way of attracting undesirable notice; also, that proceeding through a public thoroughfare with such an appendage is injudicious, and likely to result in trouble. The circumstance of the runaway dog and the tumult after him had left its impression upon him; and, travelling on his experience, he rightly judged that an unpleasant affair of the kind might best be hushed up by quietly making one's way home through back-lanes and the kitchen-door.
Skye terriers, when young, are apt to have a bad trick of gnawing and tearing up articles of wearing apparel, particularly slippers, gaiters, and such other things as are handy to toss up and catch. The fellow I am writing about, when very young, destroyed sundry items of my property in that way. He occupied a buffalo-robe in my room, and I heard him very busy one night about something, but did not pay much attention to it, as he was often lively at night. In the morning, however, on looking for a pair of leather gaiters, I recognized the remains of them, after much investigation, in a mass of pulp, to which they had been reduced by the little beast as completely as they could have been by the most experienced boa-constrictor. This habit I soon broke him of, by chastising him with the remnants of the worried article, when there were any left of substance sufficient to weave into a scourge; nor did he ever recur to it when grown up, except once, evidencing upon that occasion a remarkable instance of hereditary instinct.