Studies in the Art of Rat-catching

I think I have enumerated all the tools required for rat-catching. I need not mention a knife and a piece of string, as all honest men have them in their pocket always, even on Sundays. Some rat-catchers take with them thick leather gloves to save their getting bitten by a rat or a ferret; but I despise such effeminate ways, and I consider he does not know his profession if he cannot catch either ferret or rat with his naked hands.

I must now turn to the subject of dogs – one far more important than either ferrets or tools, and one so large that if I went on writing and writing to the end of my days I should not get to the end of it, and so shall only make a few notes upon it as a slight guide to the student, leaving him to follow it up and work it out for himself; but in so doing I beg to say that his future success as a rat-catcher will depend on his mastering the subject.

But, before proceeding further, I am anxious to say a few words in parenthesis for the benefit of the Head Masters of our schools. Admirable as their academies are for turning out Greek and Latin scholars, I cannot help thinking a proper provision is seldom made in their establishments for acquiring a real working knowledge of the profession of a rat-catcher; and I wish to suggest that it would be as well to insist on all those students who wish to take up this subject keeping at school at least one good dog and a ferret, and that two afternoons a week should be set apart entirely for field practice, and that the cost of this should be jotted down at the end of each term in the little school account that is sent home to the students' parents. I know most high-spirited boys will object to this and call it a fresh tyranny, and ever after hate me for proposing it; but I do it under a deep sense of duty, being convinced that it is far better they should perfectly master the rudimentary knowledge of such an honest profession as that of rat-catcher, than that they should drift on through their school life with no definite future marked out, finally to become perhaps such scourges of society as M.P.s who make speeches when Parliament is not sitting. Judging from the columns of the newspapers, there must be many thousands who come to this most deplorable end; and if I can only turn one from such a vicious course, I shall feel I have benefitted mankind even more than by killing rats and other vermin.

Now I must return to the subject of dogs, and in doing so I will first begin on their masters, for to make a good dog, a good master is also absolutely necessary. Anybody that has thought about it knows that as is the master, so is the dog. A quiet man has a quiet dog, a quarrelsome man a quarrelsome dog, a bright quick man a bright quick dog, and a loafing idle ruffian a slinking slothful cur.

First of all, then, the dog's master must understand dog talk; for they do talk, and eloquently too, with their tongues, their ears, their eyes, their legs, their tail, and even with the hairs on their backs; and therefore don't be astonished if you find me saying in the following pages, "Pepper told me this," or "Wasp said so-and-so." Why, I was once told by a bull terrier that a country policeman was a thief, and, "acting on information received," I got the man locked up in prison for three months, and it just served him right. Having learnt dog language, use it to your dog in a reasonable way: talk to him as a friend, tell him the news of the day, of your hopes and fears, your likes and dislikes, but above all use talk always in the place of a whip. For instance, when breaking in a young dog not to kill a ferret, take hold of the dog with a short line, put the ferret on the ground in front of him, and when he makes a dash at it say, "What are you up to? War ferret! Why, I gave four and sixpence for that, you fool, and now you want to kill it! Look here (picking the ferret up and fondling it), this is one of my friends. Smell it (putting it near his nose). Different from a rat, eh? Rather sweet, ain't it? War ferret, war ferret! Would you, you rascal? Ain't you ashamed of yourself? War ferret, war ferret!" Repeat this a few times for two or three days, and when you first begin working the dog and he is excitedly watching for a rat to bolt, just say "War ferret" to him, and he will be sure to understand. Should he, however, in his excitement make a dash at a ferret, shout at him to stop, and then, picking up the ferret, rub it over his face, all the time scolding him well for what he has done; but don't hit him, and probably he will never look at a ferret again.

In my opinion there is nothing like a thrashing to spoil a dog or a boy; reason with them and talk to them, and if they are worth keeping they will understand and obey. Mind, a dog must always obey, and obey at the first order. Always give an order in a decided voice as if you meant it, and never overlook the slightest disobedience. One short whistle should always be enough. If the dog does not obey, call him up and, repeating the whistle, scold him with a scold in your voice. Don't shout or bawl at him for all the country to hear and the rats too, but just make your words sting. If he repeats his offence, put a line and collar on him and lead him for half an hour, telling him all the time why you do so, and he will be so ashamed of himself that the chances are he will obey you ever after.

Put yourself in the dog's place. Fancy if, when you have "kicked a bit over the traces" at school, the head-master, instead of thrashing you, made you walk up and down the playground or cricket-field with him for half an hour; but no, that would be too awful; it would border on brutality! But you would not forget it in a hurry.

We humans often behave well and do good, not because it is our duty so to do, but for what the world will say and for the praise we may get. Dogs are not in all things superior to humans, and in this matter of praise I fear they are even inferior to us. They most dearly love praise, and a good dog should always get it for any and every little service he renders to man. Remember, he is the only living thing that takes a pleasure in working for man, and his sole reward is man's approbation. Give it him, then, and give it him hot and warm when he deserves it, and he will be willing to do anything for you and will spend his life worshipping you and working for you; for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, he is yours, with no sneaking thoughts of a divorce court in the background.

There is another thing a master should always do for his dog himself and do it with reason. See to his comfort; see that he has good food and water and is comfortably lodged. Don't let him be tied up to a hateful kennel in a back yard, baked by the sun in summer and nearly frozen in winter; often without water, and with food thrown into a dish that is already half full of sour and dirty remains of yesterday's dinner. This is not reasonable and is cruel. When he is not with you, shut him up in a kennel, big or little, made as nearly as you can have it on the model of a kennel for hounds. Let it be cool and airy in summer and snug and warm in winter; keep all clean – kennel, food, dishes, water and beds. Don't forget that different dogs have different requirements; for instance, that a long thick coated dog will sleep with comfort out in the snow, while a short-coated one will shiver in a thick bed of straw. Picture to yourself, as you tuck the warm blankets round you on a cold winters night, what your thin-coated pointer is undergoing in a draughty kennel on a bare plank bed, chained up to a "misery trap" in the back yard, which is half full of drifted snow. Think of it, and get up and put the dog in a spare loose box in the stable for the night, and have a proper kennel made for him in the morning.

I once had a favourite dog named "Rough" that died of distemper. A small child asked me a few days afterwards if dogs when they died went to heaven, and I, not knowing better, answered, "Yes"; and the child said, "Won't Rough wag his old tail when he sees me come in?" When you "come in" I hope there will be all your departed dogs wagging their tails to meet you. It will depend upon how you have treated them here; but take my word for it, my friend, you will never be allowed to pass that door if the dogs bark and growl at you.

Don't suppose I am a sentimental "fat pug on a string" sort of man. Next to humans I like dogs best of all creatures. Why, I have made my living by their killing rats for me at twopence per rat and three pound a farm, and I am grateful: but I like dogs in their proper place. For instance, as a rule, I dislike a dog in the house. The house was meant for man and should be kept for him. I think when a man goes indoors his dog should be shut up in the kennel and not be allowed to wander about doing mischief, eating trash, learning to loaf, and under no discipline. Now and then I do allow an old dog that has done a life's hard work to roam about as he likes, and even walk into my study (I mean kitchen) and sit before the fire and chat with me; but, then, such dogs have established characters, and nothing can spoil them; besides, they are wise beasts with a vast experience, and I can learn a lot from them. It was from one of these I learnt all about the prigging policeman.

A young dog is never good for much who is allowed to run wild; every one is his master and he obeys no one, and when he is taken out he is dull and stupid, thinking more of the kitchen scraps than of business. No, when I go to work, I like to let the dogs out myself, to see them dash about, dance around, jump up at me and bark with joy. I like to see the young ones topple each other over in sport, and the old ones gallop on ahead to the four crossways, and stand there watching to see which way I am going, and then, when I give them the direction with a wave of the hand, bolt off down the road with a wriggle of content. You might trust your life to dogs in such a joyful temper, for they would be sure to stand by you.

Thank you, young gentlemen; that is enough for this morning's lesson. You may now amuse yourselves with your Ovid or Euclid.

CHAPTER III

I am a working man, or rather have been till I got the rheumatics, and as such I naturally stick to my own class and prefer associating with those of my own sort, and therefore I always keep working dogs.

I have often bred aristocratic dogs, dogs descended from great prize-winners and with long pedigrees, and among them I have had some good ones, honest and true; but as a rule I must say my experience proves that the shorter the pedigree the better the dog, and now if I could get them I should like to keep dogs that never had a father. Some people I know call me a cad, a clod, a chaw-bacon, etc., and they call my dogs curs and mongrels. Such men talk nonsense and should be kept specially to make speeches during the recess. I don't care to defend myself but I must stand up for my dogs against all comers; and I assert boldly that, nine times out of ten, a dog with no pedigree is worth two with a long one. When I get a new dog I never ask who he is, or who his father was, but I go by his looks and his performances. There are dogs like men in all classes, who have either a mean, spiteful, vicious look, or a dull, heavy, dead one; such I avoid both in dog and man, for I find they are not worth knowing. Any other dog will do for me, and even now, though I don't often go ratting, I have as good a lot as ever stood at a hole, and I don't think I can do better than describe them as a guide to students when they come to getting a kennel together.

First of all, I never give a lot of money for a dog – how can I with rats at twopence each? – but, if I can, I drop on a likely-looking young one about a year old who was going to be "put away" on account of the tax. I got the oldest I have now in the kennel in this way. It followed George Adams, the carrier, home one night, and to this day has never been claimed; and when the tax-collector spoke to him about it, he offered it to me, and I took it and gave it the name of "Come-by-chance," but in the family and among friends she is now called "Chance."

If Chance is of any family I should think her mother was a setter and her father a bob-tail sheep-dog; but, then, I can't make out where she got her legs! She is red and white, with a perfect setter's head. She has the hind parts of a sheep-dog and evidently never had a tail; and her legs, which are very thick, would be short for a big terrier. Such are her looks, which certainly are not much to speak of; but if I had the pen of a Sir Walter Scott I could not do credit to the perfection of her character. For seven years she has been the support of my business, and I can safely say she has caused the death of more rats than all my other dogs put together. I say caused, for she is slow at killing and leaves this matter of detail to younger hands. If another dog is not near she will catch a rat and even kill it; but she has a soft mouth, and all the other dogs, except quite the youngest, know this, and, against the rule, will always dash in when she has a rat in her mouth and take it from her, and she gives it up without a struggle.

No, her forte is to find a rat. She is always in and out, up the bank, through the hedge, down the bank; not a tuft of grass escapes her, and she would hunt down each side of Regent Street and in and out of the carriages if she found herself there. She lives hunting. Nothing ever escapes her; one sniff at the deepest and most turn-about hole is enough. If the rat is not in, on she goes in a minute; but should it be ensconced deep down in the furthest corner, she stops at once and just turns her head round and says quietly to me, "Here's one." Then, whilst I am getting out a ferret, over the bank she goes, in and out the hedge in all directions, and never fails to find and mark every bolt-hole for the other dogs to stand at that belongs to the one where the rat is. As soon as I begin to put in the ferret, she will come over the hedge, give herself a shake, and sit down and watch the proceedings, not offering to take a part herself, as she feels there are more able dogs ready, and that this is not her strong point. Suppose a rat bolts and is killed and the ferret comes out, Chance will never leave the hole till she has taken a sniff at it to make sure all the rats have been cleared out. I have never known her make a mistake. If she says there is a rat in, there is one without any doubt; if she says there is not, it is no good running a ferret through the hole. Should I be alone, with no one to look out for the ferret when it comes out on the other side of a bank, Chance without a word being said to her will get over and look out, and directly the ferret appears will come back to me and give a wriggle, looking in the direction of the ferret, and then I know I must get over and pick it up.

She has one peculiarity. When she followed George Adams home, seven years ago, she was shy and scared; but, as it was a cold night, George, being a kind-hearted fellow, invited her to step indoors, an invitation she accepted in a frightened sort of way. On the hearth sat a little girl of three years old, eating her supper, and Chance, doubtless feeling very hungry, came and sat down in front of her and watched her with a wistful look. The child was not afraid and soon began feeding the dog, who took the pieces of food most gently from her fingers. When the child was taken up to bed, Chance secretly followed, and getting under the crib slept there all night. Only once since then has Chance failed to sleep in that same place, and that was the first night I had her. She was shut up in the kennel and never stopped barking all night. Since then she has always followed me home, eaten her supper at the kitchen door, and then gone off to her bed under the crib. Early in the morning she is again at my door and never goes near George's house till bed-time.

If Chance has no tail, the next dog on the list, "Tinker," makes up the average. He is a little black, hard-coated dog, with the head of a greyhound and tail of a foxhound. His head is nearly as long as his body, and his tail is just a little longer. In all ways he is a proficient at rat-catching, except that he has been known to mark a hole where there was no rat; but his strong point is killing. He will stand well back from a hole, and it does not matter how many rats bolt, or how fast, each gets one snap and is dead and dropped without Tinker having moved a foot. I named him Tinker, for a tinker gave him to me "cos he warn't no sort of waller."

Then on my list next comes "Grindum," a mongrel bull-terrier, just the tenderest hearted, mildest dispositioned dog that ever killed a rat. He has but a poor nose and is not clever, but he has one strong point, which he developed for himself without being taught. It is this: when I am ferreting a thick hairy bank with a big ditch, Grindum always goes some ten yards off and places himself in the ditch, and, let the excitement be what it will, he never moves; and should a rat in the thick grass escape the other dogs and bolt down the ditch, it is a miracle if it does not die when it reaches him. I have better and cleverer dogs, I know; but I think Grindum brings in as many twopences as any of them, and we are not going to part! The way I got Grindum is quite a little history, and I will tell it, though if you boys like, you can skip it and go on with a more serious part of your lesson.

Not far from where I lived there was, in a most out-of-the-way corner on a common, an old sand-pit, and in this a miserable dilapidated cottage, consisting of two rooms. This for some years had been empty, but one fine morning was discovered to be inhabited by a man, his wife and two children – a boy of twelve and a girl of seven – and a bull-terrier. No one knew anything about them or where they had come from, and when the landlord of the hut went to eject them, he found them in such a miserable half-starved condition that he left them alone.

Our parson called on them three times – the first time the wife told him they did not like strangers and parsons in particular; the second time the husband told him to clear out sharp, or he would do him a mischief; and the third time the man took up a knife and began sharpening it, preparatory, he said, to cutting the parson's throat!

Two months after this the man, after sitting drinking in the village pot-house all the morning, stepped round to an old mid-wife and asked her "to come and lay his wife out." The woman went and did her work and said nothing at the time, but later on it was whispered about that she had told some of her pals that "the poor crittur was black and blue, and that it was on her mind that the husband had murdered her!" After this, as I passed the cottage, I often saw the two children sitting on a log of wood outside, with the bull-dog sitting between them. None of the three ever moved out; all blinked their eyes at me as I passed, as if they were unaccustomed to the sight of a fellow-creature.

Two or three months passed, during which the man was constantly drinking at the village public-house; but he always left at sundown – "to look after the kids," he said. Then there was a poaching fray on a nobleman's estate near. Six keepers came on five poachers one moonlight night. There was a hard fight, and at last the keepers took two of the men and the other three bolted, but one was recognized as the man from the sand-pit and was "wanted" by the police.

A few nights after this I was walking down a lane in the dark near my house, when the sand-pit man stepped out of the hedge, leading his dog by a cord, and turning to me said, "Here, master, if you want a good dog, here is one for you; I am off to give myself up to the police, and I am going to turn queen's evidence against my pals." I replied that I did not want such a dog, so he said, "All right, then I'll cut his throat," and then and there prepared to do so. This was more than I could stand, so I took the cord and led the dog away, but before doing so, I asked, "How about your children?" He gave a short laugh, and said, "They would be properly provided for." It afterwards turned out that soon after leaving me he walked straight into the arms of two policemen, who saved him the trouble of giving himself up by taking him into custody.

I led my new dog home and tied him up in the corner of an open wood-shed, giving him a bundle of straw and a dish of bones, and by the starved look of him I should say this was the biggest meal he had ever had in his life.

I sat up late that night reading, and all the time in a remote corner of my mind the sand-pit man, the two children and the dog kept turning about, till at last, about midnight or later, I thought I would go to bed; but before doing so I made up my mind that I would see if my new dog was all right. I lit a lantern and stepped out of the door and found it was blowing and snowing and biting cold. Mercifully I persevered and reached the wood-shed, and what I saw there by the light of my lantern did startle me. There was the bull-dog sure enough lying curled up in the straw blinking hard at me, but – could I believe my eyes? – there lying with him, with their arms entwined round each other and round the dog, were the two children from the sand-pit fast asleep, but looking so pale and pinched I thought they must be dead.

I will give place to no man living at rat-catching and minding dogs, but here was a pretty mess, for I am no good with little children; so putting down my lantern, I hurried back to the house and got two rugs and with them wrapped the children and dog up snugly. Then I went in and woke up my wife, who had already gone to bed, and called some other women who were in the house, and after telling them what I had found, I made up a big fire in the kitchen and put on some water to boil. In a very few minutes my wife was downstairs and battling her way with me off to the wood-shed. I untied the dog and moved him away from the children. This woke them both, and they sat up and rubbed their eyes, and the poor boy appeared almost scared to death, but the little girl was quite quiet, and only watched his face with a sad careworn old look which I pray I may never see on a child's face again.

My wife is really smart with little children, and in half no time she was on her knees crooning over them, and soon she had the girl in her arms; but when I attempted to pick up the boy he only screamed and struggled, and kept calling out, "Grindum, Grindum! I won't leave Grindum. I shall be killed if I leave Grindum. Let me stay with Grindum." I assured him he should not be separated from Grindum "never no more," and at last I partially quieted him, and he allowed me to carry him into the kitchen and place him on a stool in front of the fire with his sister, while his beloved Grindum sat by his side blinking as if nothing unusual had taken place, and as if he had done the same each night for the last three months and felt a little bored by it.

The first thing to be done, my wife said, was to feed the children, and while she and the other women busied about getting it ready, I sat and watched them. Both were remarkably pretty; both dark, with finely cut features, big eyes and thick soft black hair; but yet in different ways both had something sad about them. The boy never sat still for a moment, but kept glancing fearfully at me, then at the women, and then at the door, as if he expected something dreadful to happen, and all the time kept grasping the arm of his little sister with one hand as if for protection, and clinging to the soft skin of Grindum's neck with the other. If he caught my eye, or if I spoke to him, he flinched as if I had struck him, and turned livid and tugged so hard at Grindum's skin that the poor dog's eyes were pulled into mere slits, through which I could see he yet went on blinking at the fire. The girl sat half turned round to the boy and never took her eyes off his face, looking the very essence of womanly pity and love. Now and then when he suffered from a paroxysm of fear, she would softly stroke his face, which appeared to soothe him instantly; but nothing she could do could ever stop the wild restless look in his eyes or prevent his glancing about as if watching for some dreadful apparition. It was a sad, sad picture, made doubly striking by the utter stolidity and indifference of that awful dog, Grindum.

Soon hot basins of bread and milk were prepared, which both children eat ravenously, and then they were put into steaming hot baths, washed, dried, combed, and wrapped in blankets; but when we attempted to take them up to the nice warm beds that had been prepared for them, there was the same wild terrified cry from the boy for Grindum; and to pacify him the dog had to be taken upstairs with them, and half an hour later, when my wife and I peeped into the room, we saw the two children locked in each other's arms fast asleep, with Grindum curled up on the bed next to the boy, yet blinking horribly, but perfectly composed and making himself at home.