A WORD
WITH THE WOMEN
(By Elia W. Peattie)
Friends of dogs, of whom there are
many in Omaha, will be interested to
read the report which the president of
the American Society for the Preven-
tion of Cruelty to Animals makes in re-
lation to the shelter for animals in New
York City. The society in New York
has been invested with all the powers
and functions which were formerly in-
trusted to the city government in the li-
censing of dogs, the capturing of es-
trays and the detention and humane de-
struction of captured animals at the
city pound A building 100 feet long
and 25 feet wide is fitted up with every
possible convenience for the mainte-
nance of captured animals, and for de-
stroying them without pain. The serv-
ice consists of four ambulances and
two wagons fitted for the purpose, eight
horses and twenty-two persons, who
work by relays. The president of the
society says:
The Shelter has been in operation for
barely eight months. The undertaking
was necessarily experimental, but its ar-
rangements were carefully planned in ad-
vance, and thus far they have been car-
ried out with reasonable success. There
is only one institution in the world with
which the Shelter can be compared. I re-
fer to the Battersea Home for Dogs in
London. On examining the thirty-third
annual report (1893) of that excellent in-
stitution, I find some interesting particu-
lars. The Battersea home has the as-
sistance of the metropolitan police of Lon-
don, its operations extend throughout the
city and county of London, with a popula-
tion which is about three times as large
as that of the city of New York. I find
that in 1893 it received 17 928 lost and home-
less dogs, and it may be inferred that in
a city of one-third the population it would
have received 6 000 in twelve months, or
4 000 in eight months. Our own Shelter, by
the work of our own employes, and with
no assistance whatever from the police,
in the capture of dogs, has received in
eight months 7 765 dogs alone, that is to
say in the first eight months of existence,
with new machinery, and acting under a
new law, the Shelter has received over 93
per cent more dogs than the Battersea
home, after thirty-three years of exper-
ience, and with all the assistance of one of
the best organized police forces in the
world, had received for an equal popula-
tion in the same period of time. But this
is not all, for the Battersea home receives
dogs alone whereas our Shelter receives
cats and other animals, and the number
of animals of all kinds which ahve been
received during our first eight months has
been 22 028 of which 632 were lost animals
restored to their owners.
It is a cause of great encouragement,
that such a work should have been put in
operation without appreciable difficulty,
but the truth is that the public con-
fidence which has been generously given
to the society in this undertaking has
made all our difficulties less than we
could reasonably have expected, and it
has been observed by some of the news-
papers that the summer of 1894- the first
summer for many years in which dogs in
the city of New York have been allowed
to go unmuzzled- is also the first summer
in which there has not been a single
paroxysm of popular apprehension of
hydrophobia.
Apropos of dogs, it is astonishing
what a wide acquaintance a dog can
make. There is, for example, a dog I
know named Rex- well, we will say,
Rex Butler. He is one of the most
sociable of dogs, with a bright, respon-
sive face and the most charming Collie
ways. He will find any stick that you
throw, no matter what a tangle of weeds
it may land in. Moreover, after you
once become friends with him, he will
never see you on the street without
hastening to find a stick, which he will
present to you with the request- which
he makes with his eloquent tail- that
you please throw it for him to run after.
If, by any chance he cannot find a
stick he goes half frantic with chagrin
and pique, and makes his apologies by
fawning humbly about your feet. If
you refuse to throw the stick, or pre-
tned not to see it after he has laid it at
your feet, he will rend the air with
nervous little barks and tug at your
garments to attract your attention, in-
gratifyingly pointing at the stick with
his paw. His greatest joy is
to jump through the spray of
water thrown from the garden hose,
and no matter how high you may elevate
the spray, he will endeavor to leap
through it. He is absolutely obedient,
although self respectful. He never
passed a friend without some sort of
salutation. He has among prejudices,
and while he is never vicious, there are
persons whom he delights to cut, and
with some he will never exchange a civ-
ility. Now it happens that the children
of his owners are all dead, and that
Rex is the only pet in the house that
should have been and once was full of
girls and boys. They are very quiet and
reserved people, his owners, and are
known to but few of hte neighbors. But
Rex, being the sociable creature that he
is, and of a sort who makes a round
of calls every summer evening, is known
all over the neighborhood. So it has
come about quite naturally that the at-
tractive house where he lives is known
among all the children as "Rex But-
ler's home," and the gentleman who
owns him- and who really is a man of
some importance- is spoken of by the
children as "the man Rex lives with."
There is no doubt that Rex is one of
the neighbors and that he is recognized
as such even if he has no voice in special
assessments, and ward councilmen.
