"Murphy" - A Message to Dog Lovers: (Timeless Classic Books)

For such a temperament as Murphy’s, a life like this was happiness itself. He was sociable, and loved company intensely, though preferably the company of Man. Solitude he abhorred; games were his delight; for killing things, even were it a rat from one of the thousand holes he met with when walking by the river, he never cared, and indeed appeared never quite to understand. “Live and let live” was his motto, while playing always the game of “catch-who-catch-can.” There was no reason to bring pain into the field at all. Life to him was a condition full of smiles, or to be made so, though there was snarling round the corner, as well as folk of difficult temperament to remain puzzlers to the end. Those about, therefore, were to be reckoned friends, and to be met in such way as better dogs themselves lay down. Their society obviously had its rules, which, if occasionally broken, were yet to be known and recognized, just as they themselves, though dogs, were able to discern that the members of that other society, on to which they were apparently grafted, had theirs. These last and they themselves were nothing less than partners—so it seemed to him—in a great game, to be played always in good heart and with the spirit of true sportsmanship.