Cosmopolitan April 1935 Page17

Left, Odd McIntyre's setter "Clay";
top, his Sealyham "Rainbow";
right; his Boston bull "Junior"

“- beware of giving your heart to a dog to tear!" 

by O. O. McINTYRE 

Sketches by Marguerite Kirmse

Photograph by Pirie MacDonald

I WAS SWEPT into a sudden freshet of tears recently by that newsreel showing the Michigan dog that has been waiting twelve years at the doors of a hospital operating room for his master, who never came out. Save for necessitous brief interludes, it has been a twenty-four-hour daily vigil. 

More than Senator Vest's oration to the jury, Maeterlinck's tearful tribute to his canine companion, or Lord Byron's tombstone elegiac to his pet, this film shot from actual life revealed with stabbing poignancy the unswerving loyalty of a dog. 

Three dogs have broken my heart. First, it was the black setter, Clay, of my boyhood. By the glow of a sputtering candle in an old coal shed I sat beside him the night long, helpless as he suffered the agony of a conscienceless poisoner’s ground glass. 

Next, it was a Boston bull, Junior, who, obeying a command of mine to cross deserted Fifth Avenue at. midnight, was struck down by drunken joy-riders. Junior crawled toward me, licked my hand as though to say, "It wasn't your fault, partner!" and was no more. 

Now there is the newest scar. A beautiful and joyous Sealyham named Rainbow, full of romp, devotion and clownish nonsense, came tail-wagging back from a walk one day, and a little later slithered bellywise toward his mistress with a pathetic whimper. Soon he was in the convulsions of a baffling poison that rendered him stiff and cold. 

It is not blind, unreasoning faith but a conviction as clear as a winter star that such unquenchable sparks do not fly upward to nowhere. Somewhere there is an Elysian greenery of eternal frolic where quizzical heads are suddenly cocked for the familiar voice they will certainly hear. A paradise otherwise is unthinkable. 

Foolish, one might say, this constant giving of one's "heart to a dog to tear." Yet so long as life lasts I shall never be without a dog. I own two Bostons now-Billy, aged twelve and stone-deaf, and Nimble, in the flush of young years. Both ardent, trusting and believing. 

Each will again break my heart. I shall walk the streets dry-eyed all the night trying to get hold of myself just as I have always done. And I hate grief and sorrow as much as any man. 

But my dogs have taught me much I have found difficult to learn from the study of mankind. That is my fault, I know, but because it is so, nothing can alienate the affection I feel toward them. 

More than once they have shown me the grandeur of humility, the unbelievable depths of loyalty and the stout courage. of meeting death with a tail-wag. 

There may be dogs who betray their trusts but I have been around them all my life and have never seen the slightest falter. From alley cur to the noblest strain. 

In a crumbling moment when my world suddenly collapsed and all the future seemed chaos, I happened to glance down from an hour's dumb staring out the window. There was Billy who had placed at my feet his rubber ball, which no one had ever been able to take from him. For him it was the supreme sacrifice. 

He knew I was in need of something, but he didn't know what. So he gave me his most prized possession. Every dog worthy the name is like that!