ming
to me and plumping his huge fore paws down on my moccasins, challenging
me to play the game of toe treading that he loved; and whenever he beat
me at it he would seize my ankle in his jaws and make me hop around on
one foot, to his great delight. He was my talking dog. He had more
different tones in his bark than any other dog I ever knew. He never
came to the collar in the morning, he never was released from it at
night, without a cheery "bow-wow-wow." And we never stopped finally to
make camp but he lifted up his voice. There was something curious about
that. Only two nights before, when we had been unable to reach the
health resort owing to wind-hardened drifts right across the trail that
overturned the heavy sled again and again, swing the gee pole as one
would, and had stopped several times in the growing dusk to inspect a
spot that seemed to promise a camping place, Arthur had remarked that
Nanook never spoke until the spot was reached on which we decided to
pitch the tent. What faculty he had of recognising a good place, of
seeing that both green spruce and dry spruce were there in sufficient
quantity, I do not know--or whether he got his cue from the tones of our
voice--but he never failed to give tongue when the stop was final and
never opened his mouth when it was but tentative.

I could almost tell the nature of any disturbance that arose from the
tone of Nanook's bark. Was it some stray Indian dog prowling round the
camp; was it the distant howling of wolves; was it the approach of some
belated traveller--there was a distinct difference in the way he
announced each. I well remember the new note that came into his
passionate protest when he was chained to a stump at the reindeer camp,
and the foolish creatures streamed all over the camping-ground that
night. To have them right beside him and yet be unable to reach them, to
have them brushing him with their antlers while he strained helplessly
at the chain, was adding insult to injury. And he kept me awake over it
all night and told me about it at intervals all next day.

The coat that dog had was the heaviest and thickest I ever saw. On his
back the long hair parted in the middle, and underneath the hair was fur
and underneath the fur was wool. He was an outdoors dog strictly. It was
only in the last year or two that he could be induced voluntarily to
enter a house; he seemed, like Mowgli, to have a suspicion of houses.
And if he did come in he had no r