Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1911 — Bloodhound’s Luxurious Surroundings [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Bloodhound’s Luxurious Surroundings

BANGOR, ME. —One of the finest packs of bloodhounds In this part of the country is kept at thd Maine State prison in Thomaston for the moral effect on prisoners who contemplate escape. The pack Is a mixture of an imported English strain and carefully bred sdutherh stock. One of the pack, when but a young puppy, was presented to Marguerite Owen, a Belfast girl, and the two have been Inseparable companions for the last three years. The dog’s name Is Hilda. She Is of a most sensitive and sympathetic nature and feels a cross word much mere than some dogg would a kick. She romps with the children, her favorite diversion being hide-and-seek. She knows the children by name, and when she is “it,” she al ways finds the one she, Is told to seek. - —---rr—Hilda has a bedroom all to herself, fitted up with a little Iron cot with real bedclothes like one of the family. The room is lighted with elec-

tricity, and each night her mistress goes upstairs and Hilda crawls into , bed, lays her head on the pillow and waits to be covered up and tucked in. When this is done the light is turned off and she is left for the night, rarely stirring until called in the morn- / lng. Mention of bloodhounds usually suggests “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the great, bloodthirsty beasts that chase Eliza across the Ice, but the big, ferocious appearing *rnan tracking Cuban bloodhounds” of the show Dills are usually the lumbering, good natured Great Danes, mastiffs or a cross breed. It is easy to teach them to chase Eliza, when the unfortunate woman has some choice tidbits in the pockets of her apron with which to feed the dogs if they chase her with satisfactory realism. f , ■ The chief characteristic of the genuine bloodhound is the marvelous development of their scent-following instinct, especially when trained to foP low human beings. Their ability to keep the trail is the result of intelligence and training and not on account of any animosity against-the person being trailed, for, contrary to the general supposition, the real bloodhound' rarely if ever attacks the person bo has been following.