A shot at the animal behind the bushes was followed by a hoarse cry.  He was hit, and ran; but, in spite of our urgings, the dogs stayed at the gate and only stopped howling.  Under any other conditions, upon the signal of the shot they would all have started in pursuit of the wounded animal.

A wolf came to the farm during the last winter (1890-91) and attacked the same bitch.  He would have carried her off, for he had seized her by the throat, if we could judge from the stifled cries she uttered; but this time he found with her a new watch dog—­a mountain bitch from the Pyrenees—­of a breed that attacks the wolf and the bear.  The wolf would have been caught if he had not run away.  He did not return, for he had been attacked, and learned what he had to deal with.

The Pyrenean breed furnishes excellent watch dogs.  I knew one of remarkable traits.  At evening he would go round the house, giving two or three growls at each door.  With his head raised he seemed to listen to his fine voice, then he would start again and go to another door.  He seemed desirous to show those who were observing him that he was attending to his post as guardian.  He then went away in silence along the walk, through a dark, rising hedgerow, leaping the slight hillock, yelping toward the wood.  He listened, yelped again, and went in.  There was never any failure in this performance, but every evening as night was coming on he began his round, which no one had taught him.  It was all done in his function as a guard.  It would be hard to determine what his yelps meant, but there were in them an inflection, a sonorousness, and a continuance quite different from those he uttered when pursuing a passer-by or when going to meet a person coming toward the house.  Every one who has a watch dog is able to tell by the sound of his barking when a person is coming up, and usually what sort of a visitor it is.

The peasants’ dogs of the southwest of France dislike the country millers, because of the long whips which they are always carrying and snapping, and with which the dogs, running after them, are often struck.  From as far off as the snapping of the whip can be heard, the dogs come to wait for the millers and pursue them; and it is easy to recognize when the millers are passing, by the behavior of the dogs.  There is in this also a significance, at once aggressive and defensive, in the cries which one can, by giving a little attention, soon learn to distinguish.

Another example of the reality of the various meanings of the cries of the dog under different circumstances is afforded by the companies that collect around a female in heat.