To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the
wild dog that have come in to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come.
'Yes,' said the lord of the castle, 'if you will pass the night down there in the old tower, go thither; but I warn you, it is at the peril of your life, for it is full of wild dogs, which bark and howl without stopping, and at certain hours a man has to be given to them, whom they at once devour.' The whole district was in sorrow and dismay because of them, and yet no one could do anything to stop this.
The howling of the wild dogs was henceforth heard no more; they had disappeared, and the country was freed from the trouble.
Once hadst thou
wild dogs in thy cellar: but they changed at last into birds and charming songstresses.
In a similar manner a whole pack of the hungry
wild dogs will scarcely ever (and I was told by some never) venture to attack a flock guarded by even one of these faithful shepherds.
Each was given a dagger and then, at the far end, a pack of twelve calots, or
wild dogs were loosed upon them.
The fall through leafy branches and the dizzy heights; the snakes that struck at me as I dodged and leaped away in chattering flight; the
wild dogs that hunted me across the open spaces to the timber--these were terrors concrete and actual, happenings and not imaginings, things of the living flesh and of sweat and blood.
For a moment my gaze traversed the landscape beneath until it was caught and held by four figures near the base of the cliff--a human figure held at bay by three hyaenodons, those ferocious and blood-thirsty
wild dogs of the Eocene.
Other men, who had no land and no fish-traps, and who else would have gone hungry, were glad to work for Pig-Jaw, caring for his goats, guarding them from wild dogs and tigers, and driving them to the feeding pastures in the mountains.
And then we will go out together, the Fish-Eaters and the Meat-Eaters, and we will kill the tigers and the lions and the wolves and the wild dogs, and we will pasture our goats on all the hill-sides and plant our corn and fat roots in all the high mountain valleys.
Perry argues that
wild dogs were first domesticated for hunting purposes; but I do not agree with him.
In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the
wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down.