Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1880 — A Jealous Dog. [ARTICLE]

A Jealous Dog.

Truth is indeed often, if not nearly always, stranger than fiction, as the following extraordinary but, true story will attest : The circumstance occurred about two months ago, nt a gentleman’s seat in North Wales. This gentleman was the owner of a very fine but savage mastiff, with a cross of the St. Bernard in him, named Mars. All day he was kept chained up in a back yard, and only let loose at night. One day, as he was sitting gloomily within his solitary kennel, to his unspeakable “ rage, resentment and despair, ” he saw his mate, a beautiful red-and-white setter, called Venus, gamboling and flirting under his very eyes with a very handsome grayhound, called Swift, who had won several cups. Mars writhed, growled and clanked his chain, but all in vain. The happy pair paid no attention to his outraged feelings. That day Mars ate no dinner, but lay with his nose between his elongated forepaws, uttering a low growl, while his red eyes glared fitfully from right to left. At length niglit came, and he was free. He bounded on through the darkness, and rushed to and fro, like a troubled spirit, as he was, till morning dawned, when he met Swift, for whom he had been looking all night. The former, like a gay and fashionable dog, waiving the little injury he had inflicted upon Mars, went up to him, wagging his tail, and holding out to him the right paw of fellowship; whereupon that canine Othello seized him by the nape of the neck, dragged him down to the riverside, and there, with the most deliberate vengeance, dashed his beautiful head against a stone, and literally split his skull till the margin of the river was crimsoned with his blood. After which the still-unappeased Mars dragged his victim into the water, and kept pressing him down till he was quite dead. At sunrise the whipper-in, happening to pass by, saw the corse of this beautiful and valuable dog in the river, Mars, with his heavy paw still pressing him down, while his red tongue was panting and his redder eyes glaring round upon the rocks in defiance, as if glorying in the foul murder he had just committed.