. CHAPTER XLVI The Greyhound N THE introductory chapter to the hound family we referred to the name of greyhound and gave our opinion regarding its origin, with our reasons therefore, so that we shall now confine ourselves to the dog and its history. The advisabil- ity, if not the necessity, for having a fast dog with which to capture animals for food at a time when weapons were in their infancy, needs no detailed setting forth. That was the starting point of the greyhound, however, and we may depend upon it that discrimination was used in mating fast dogs together so as to get still faster on
. CHAPTER XLVI The Greyhound N THE introductory chapter to the hound family we referred to the name of greyhound and gave our opinion regarding its origin, with our reasons therefore, so that we shall now confine ourselves to the dog and its history. The advisabil- ity, if not the necessity, for having a fast dog with which to capture animals for food at a time when weapons were in their infancy, needs no detailed setting forth. That was the starting point of the greyhound, however, and we may depend upon it that discrimination was used in mating fast dogs together so as to get still faster ones, until the lines of the grey- hound were established. The ancestor of the greyhound was a contem- porary of the first watch dogs and the first sheep dogs and was the first to be bred for shape. We do not mean that our ancient ancestors had a scale of points for their food-catching dogs, but they bred the speediest and cleverest dogs together. That of itself means that they bred for uniformity of type, for there is but one form that will give us speed and the ability to be clever in handling game. Those lines are what we see in greyhounds that are great performers, not dogs bred for show points, but for work. A wide chested, straight-shouldered, slack-loined, weak-quartered dog cannot run fast, and one that does will not have those faults, because if he had he could not do what he does. That is the reason why the form of the greyhound is traced back as far as we have any dog delineations. There is no doubt that the name was made to cover a great many dogs that were not what we call greyhounds. It is not so very long ago that deer- hounds and wolfhounds were called Scottish and Irish greyhounds. The Russian wolfhound was mentioned as the Russian greyhound and his close relative of Persia had also the same breed name and if we go back further we cannot find traces of dogs that must have existed in England and could only have been included in the general group of greyhounds. No
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectdogs, bookyear1906
