Fairer than writers elsewhere, Betty Barlds, in THE LADIES KENNEL JOURNAL for May last, refers to Mrs. McLaren Morrison's "Bhutan Dog" as a new acquisition "which must, from her description, be something as yet unknown to dog books". I have never seen it, but from its photograph it would seem to be of the blue, shorter-haired variety, with chest and paws (as is invariably the case, I think) inclining to whitish fawn, and shading off on the crown of the head and sides of the body to silver grey. In those varieties, both fawn and blue, which have longer hair, the ears also are longer and more pendulous and there is a marked difference in the way that the tail is carried in the two classes; but the farnily resemblance between all these Central Asian Terriers imported to India through the Himalayas, whether they come via Sikkim or Bhutan in the extreme east, or Kashmir on the west, is so striking that no one can regard them as more than well-marked varieties of the same breed.
Under scientific breeding their differences would, of course, become accentuated; but for some time to come it would probably be too much to expect to obtain Tibetan Terriers breeding truly to one standard of points. I have seen many, and have owned and bred several, and to all of them Mrs. McLaren Morrison's description, "like a Skye with a Scotch Terrier head", applies exactly. From her calling it a "Bhutan dog" it is, however, evident that Mrs. McLaren Morrison's dog comes from the Calcutta side of India, where Bhutan and Sikkim fringe Tibet. At the Punjab end of the Himalayas the same dogs are procured, with great difficulty, from Tibet through Kashmir and Leh, and they are known as "Tibetan Terriers".
The first one I ever saw was a waif in the streets of Lahore, mangy, half starved, and full of parasites. I was living in the Club quarters, and in the dusk of evening saw a long-bodied, short-legged animal sneaking in the direction of the servants' quarters and the cook-house. It was so utterly unlike anything that one is accustomed to call a "dog" in India - where "legginess" is the characteristic which all dogs seem to inherit or inevitably acquire - that I could only regard it as some strange beast, "larger than a mongoose and too bushy for a civet cat", so I slung a stone at it, and the waif at once displayed a trait which I found subsequently to be common to all the Tibetan Terriers I became acquainted with. It stopped dead, with its nose and tail to the ground, and awaited in abject humility until I came up to examine it, when it crawled fawning to my feet. I was unutterably astonished to see looking up at me through the matted hair at the near end of the strange beast, those clear, brown, trustful eyes under shaggy eyebrows that one always associates with Scotch dogs, and my heart went out to the poor little wretch. I took it into the billiard-room, and there many men, each knowing, as most English-men do, more or less about dogs, ventured their opinions as to my prize. "Skye", "Scotch", and "Dandie" were all ventured as its class; but none fitted it exactly, although it had that unmistakable stamp of "breeding" that forbids the supposition of mongrelism, even in a dog of unknown character. So convinced were all of this that, in spite of our ignorance, and of my very doubtful title of ownership, I had a number of bids up to fifty rupees for the animal on the spot.
I rejoiced next day when I ascertained from the servants that it was an ownerless, or "jungly" dog, which had long been a pensioner on the cook's bounty, managing somehow to pick up a living among the great pariah curs that fought each evening for bones round the cook-house. I rejoiced still more when a bath and good brushing brought out some of the real beauty of the breed; and yet more when shortly after a great Central Asian traveller, Mr. H. Dauvergne, who knows the tracks across the Pamirs as well as a cockney knows the road to Hampstead, recognised it at once as an unusually good specimen of the Tibetan Terrier, a pet household dog among the well-to-do of Central Asia. He promised on his next journey past Leh or Ladakh to try to secure a mate for her- my treasure trove was a female - although he warned us that he had no great hopes of being able to do so.
He managed it, however; for scarcely six months had passed before he arrived in Lahore with a beautiful little male terrier on a string. It was the only specimen he had come across on his journey, and the owner had steadfastly refused all offers of money for it. He did not care for the dog much himself, but his family valued it, and he did not care to face an enraged zenana on his return to Tashkent. Mr. Dauvergne, however, has in a marked degree the resourceful way that all explorers acquire; and so, in the grey of early morning, as he set his face for India, catching sight of the little dog tethered in his friend's quarters, he sent over servants with a box of cartridges which they deposited as the price - in those regions a very large price - for the dog. He carried it off, and on the solitary journey through the wilds to the comparative civilisation of Kashmir and the Punjab he became so attached to the little animal that it was with evident reluctance that he fulfilled his promise, and handed over to our charge the mate for "Rough", as we had called my first prize.
"Tixi" (pronounced "Teexee") was, Mr. Dauvergne told us, the name of the new arrival; and as he had never known what it was to pick up a starveling existence in the streets like poor "Rough", he was much more lively and pugnacious in character, but had the same characteristic of immediate and abject submission before the slightest sign of anger from a man; and their children all inherited it. We had two litters of puppies, eight in all, and among our friends were many eager applicants for them: but of those which we gave away I only know of the present whereabouts of one - a female named "Squirmer", from the fawning humility which she exhibited to a comical excess in youth - now in the possession of Mrs. Haden Cope, at Simla. "Squirmer" has a remarkably handsome head, but, compared with all the rest of the family which were in our possession, an indifferent coat.
The best of them all was "Rough II" - now, alas, like his brothers and parents, dead. They appear to be peculiarly susceptible to climatic changes; and although we were given to understand that they could thrive in the plains of India during the hot weather, "Rough" died of enlarged liver after she had been in our possession three years. "Tixi" died, on transfer to the hills, of fever soon after the birth of his second family. The latter were left in the plains, where they had been born, when we went to Simla in the summer: but all died of fever consequent upon distemper save "Rough II". In spite of his sex, he had been so named from his great resemblance as a puppy to his mother, and by taking him to the hills or Kashmir each year, we kept him in flourishing health until last summer, when he died almost immediately after his arrival in the hills, apparently of a second attack of distemper, at the age of four.
We have thus none left: but long before the death of "Rough II", we had become convinced that it is useless to attempt to establish a breed of Tibetan Terriers in the plains of India. They cannot stand the heat of summer if it proves severe; while their constitutions appear too weak to survive frequent changes of climate from the plains to the hills. In the Himalayas, however, they can evidently flourish, for there dwells - or dwelt a few years ago - near the Foreign Office at Simla the happy possessor of a large number of these charming dogs, evidently bred on the spot. At other hill stations, too, they are occasionally to be seen; but dog-breeding is very little practised in India, and hardly one person in a hundred, although the hill stations are on the high roads - if sheep tracks can be so called - to Tibet has ever heard of the Tibetan Terrier, and specimens even change hands as "Scotch" or "Skye" Terriers, the Englishman in India always assuming that any decent-looking dog must be English. Indeed, almost the only phrases used in commending a dog are "imported" or "from imported parents". Nor is this so foolish as it may seem; for the dog's freight to India by P. and 0. is £5, exclusive of other charges, and few people care to pay this sum for underbred animals.
The Tibetan Terrier is, nevertheless, an animal which deserves all that care which, as it becomes better known, will certainly be bestowed upon it by English fanciers both in the hills in India and at home. It has a most charming disposition, is extraordinary good with children, and a vigilant watchdog; playful in the extreme, and very loving; while its looks and manners are always such as to charm even the most casual observer. It has always been a wonder to me how my original "Rough" could ever have been allowed to become ownerless and to remain so for a long period, until I luckily chanced to mistake her in the dusk for a "janwar", as the Englishman in India calls every wild thing of undefined species.
The Tibetan Terrier gets its characteristics evidently by inheritance. Being bred only as a household or harem pet, it is always the companion of women and children, with whom it plays or sleeps all day and over whom it watches at night. Men, especially men out of doors, are strangers, from whose anger it seeks no safety in flight; but by cringing before them seems to ask only to be picked up and taken safely indoors again. In the home life of an English family it would probably lose this characteristic; for, strangely enough, the dog is really courageous. It will attack intruders at night; and my "Rough II" was a great warrior. In Kashmir he used to wander around our camp at night and easily routed the great curs that swarmed about the camp in search of food. On one occasion he visited a neighboring native village at night, and according to a native Kashmiri artillery man, who rescued what was left of him and brought it to my camp, he had, single-jawed, sustained a conflict with all the dogs of the place so long that even the apathetic villagers turned out of bed to see what kind of a leopard or bear he might be. It seemed impossible that he could be patched up, but he was; and, except that he was lame in all of his legs, he became after a time just as handsome a doggie and as ready for a row with his own kind as ever.
As might be expected of a race of dogs bred over a wide tract of uncivilised country in isolated harems, where there are no Ladies' Kennel Associations, and, if there were, jealous spouses would not allow their women folk to join them, the Tibetan Terriers do not conform strictly to a single Standard. But there are several clearly defined types; and, speaking with the confidence of the irresponsible prophet, I should say that the classes for Tibetan Terriers at the L.K.A. Shows of the future, would be: drop-eared, long-haired, blue, or fawn, with the colour shading almost to white on chest and feet. With the fawn colour, dark, almost black eyes are found; with the blue, the eyes are of the lovely brown, so typical of Scotch dogs. They are all rather long-bodied and short-legged; and in the long-haired varieties the tail is very bushy and curled high on the back; in the shorter haired kinds, it exactly resembles and is carried like that of the Skye. No doubt the varieties are often cross-bred; but all that I have seen have clearly belonged to one or the other, and there has been no merging of their distinctive features. Let me conclude with the hope that these few lines may turn the attention of some of our dog fanciers toward the Tibetan Terrier, than which I know of no more charming dog in a house, especially where there are children.