DOGS IN GERMANY.
[To ran EDITOR or ras °Bmcrnms.i7
have read the article in the Spectator of August 20th, on "The Society of Doge," with the greatest interest and pleasure at finding embodied in it all my own thoughts and feelings on the subject of dogs.
I entirely agree with your writer that any one sentencing a canine friend to death simply because it is infirm or aged, may find a great deal of kindly amusement in dogs, but does not and cannot regard them as Mends. (I may perhaps be allowed to have some knowledge of the subject, as I have myself a dog- friend aged twenty-three, who has just returned with me from a four months' trip to America, and of whom I can truly say that the pleasure his affection and society gives us more than outweighs the great trouble and care that he is to us, owing to his many infirmities.) I cannot get rid of a shrewd suspicion that many of these good people would, in a more primitive state of society, find it equally convenient to get rid of their aged and decrepit relatives. On the other hand, a long residence in South Germany has led me to agree with Mr. Guggenberger that dogs. play a much more conspicuous social part there than they do with us, and this notwithstanding the law of which he speaks.
This law may to a certain extent be excused by the fact that its cause is the belief—held by the best authorities in Germany —that the liability of dogs to rabies increases with their age, and is dangerously present in old and sickly dogs.
Nevertheless, so strong is the German love for dogs that the law is practically never enforced, where the dog in question has a master able and willing to care for him ; and in one small town, I know of one dog of thirty-two, and at least a dozen among my own acquaintance who are over thirteen, and many of whom are blind, partially paralysed, and otherwise afflicted, but who yet triumphantly pass their veterinary examination year after year. This may not be the case in Bavaria, but it certainly is in Baden, where the law is never put into effect except where poor, neglected animals are in question. It has always seemed to use that the true love of dogs, and the sense of a responsibility of the master towards the dog, exist in a far greater degree, at least in South Germany, than with us ; and my desire to remove the stigma your article caste on the German nation must be my excuse for so largely trespassing on your
valuable space.—I am, Sir, &c., ALICE KEALIKEY.
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