Wild Dogs

Out motoring one day last December Mayor Peter E. Demarest of Oakland, N. J., encountered a pack of wild dogs trailing a deer. With a single bullet in his gun he brought down the dogs' leader, a powerful 150-lb. mongrel shepherd. Another dog in the pack viciously charged the Mayor, who had to leap into his car, bang shut the door. Last week he sought revenge.

With 22 other huntsmen, including an oldtime Michigan wolf hunter, Mayor Demarest set out into the snow-covered hills. Breaking up into groups of four or five, the party tramped 15 miles through tangled underbrush, climbed rocky ledges, threaded swamps. They came back that night with one year-old wild dog. Explained Dr. Philip Gootenberg, president of New Jersey's Consolidated Sportsmen: "The dogs made fools of us. They are smarter than wolves. When we retraced our path we found the snow broken with prints. They had been following us. One pad print was more than three inches wide. . . ."

Several packs of wild dogs have been ranging northern New Jersey's game-filled Ramapo Mountains for some 15 years. Dwellers on lonely farms or town outskirts have shivered at the sound of their baying in the night. Hunters have found their trail in the hair & bones of many a deer and rabbit. In their veins runs the blood of abandoned or runaway pets--German shepherd, Airedale, collie, hound. Members of one pack are apparently crossed chow and hound, look like big red foxes.

Each mongrel generation has grown wilder and more cunning. Hated for their destruction of game, they are also feared because an outbreak of rabies among them might ravage the whole district. As their next move, New Jersey sportsmen last week planned to set steel wolf traps through the Ramapos.

Fine Dogs

In the canine social scale, the extreme opposites of New Jersey's wild dogs (see above) were six elegant creatures who paraded under the bright lights of Manhattan's Madison Square Garden one night last week. From 2,240 entries in the Westminster Kennel Club's 57th annual show these six, chosen best of their breeds and classes, had reached the final competition for the title of Best in Show, finest U. S. dog. The dogs seemed to know it. Gravely circling the green-carpeted judging ring, they appeared oblivious of the 5,000 spectators and of each other.

Tiny Pierrot of Hartlebury, best Pekingese (TIME, Jan. 30) and best toy dog, got swooping dabs from his owner's hairbrush as he bounced along. Close on his heels, in ridiculous contrast, stalked huge, brindled Great Dane Gunar von Hollergarten, best working dog. Then came liver & white Norman of Hamsey, an English Springer Spaniel who had barely beaten out famed old English Setter Blue Dan of Happy Valley for best gun dog. The ribs and muscles of snow-white Greyhound Boveway Beau Brummel, best hound, looked like delicately chiseled marble. His kinky jet hair and the crimson ribbon on his topknot made French Poodle Whippendell Poli of Carillon, best non-sporting dog, look like a Harlem belle. The sixth dog was a magnificent black & tan Airedale, Warland Protector of Shelterock, best terrier, just arrived in the U. S. after a long string of victories in England. A good Airedale pup can be bought for $35. Ringside gossip said that Warland Protector had cost his owner, S. M. Stewart of Montclair, N. J., $10,000.

In the centre of the ring, closely watching the proud and handsome dogs, was a proud and handsome lady, Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, wife of Remington Arms Co.'s Board Chairman Marcellus Hartley Dodge, niece of John Davison Rockefeller Sr. She was proud because she had been chosen first woman ever to choose the best dog in the Westminster show.

Mrs. Dodge has more than 100 pure-bred dogs of eleven breeds on her 2,000-acre estate at Madison, N. J., where she holds an annual show of her own. In the past two years her dogs have won more best-in-show prizes than any other U. S. exhibitor's. Her pointer Nancolleth Markable was judged best dog in last year's Westminster show. Other fanciers were glad she was chosen judge this year because they consider her unexcelled in all-round knowledge of all dog breeds. They were also glad because the honor took her own formidable entries out of competition.

As the dogs went through their paces and struck statuesque poses, their handlers stroking their tails and composing their jaws, Mrs. Dodge eyed them, felt their flanks, examined their teeth. Her own taste runs to big dogs. She waved the Pekingese and poodle aside in a jiffy. The Spaniel went next. It took her only 18 minutes to put the Airedale in the winning stall, with the Great Dane and the greyhound unofficially second and third.

Few questioned Mrs. Dodge's choice of Warland Protector last week. Most fanciers consider him utterly faultless, the finest specimen yet produced of his comparatively young breed.*

*The Airedale originated last century when middle-class and laboring Englishmen in the Aire River Valley tried to improve the scent and watermanship of their local terriers by crossing them with otterhounds. First called Waterside terrier, the new dog was renamed Airedale in 1879.

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