Explore "The Dog as a Sportsman" by Andrew Barton Paterson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The sheep-dog and the cattle-dog are the workmen of the animal kingdom; sporting and fighting dogs are the professionals and artists.
A house-dog or a working-dog will only work for his master; a professional or artistic dog will work for anybody, so long as he is treated like an artist. A man going away for a week's shooting can borrow a dog, and the dog will work for him loyally, just as a good musician will do his best, though the conductor is strange to him, and the other members of the band are not up to the mark. The musician's art is sacred to him, and that is the case with the dog -- Art before everything.