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Rex
by
My uncle swore many oaths, how we had ruined the dog for ever, made him vicious, spoiled him for showing purposes, and been altogethera pack of mard-soft [note: Spoiled, namby-pamby (dialect). ]fools not fit to be trusted with any dog but a gutter-mongrel.
Poor Rex!We heard his temper was incurably vicious, and he had to be shot.
And it was our fault. We had loved him too much, and he had loved us too much. We never had another pet.
It is a strange thing, love. Nothing but love has made the dog lose his wild freedom, to become the servant of man. And this very servility or completeness of love makes him a term of deepest contempt. —”You dog!”
We should not have loved Rex so much, and he should not have loved us. There should have been a measure. We tended, all of us, to overstep the limits of our own natures. He should have stayed outside human limits, we should have stayed outside canine limits. Nothing is more fatal than the disaster of too much love. My uncle was right, we had ruined the dog.
My uncle was a fool, for all that.