The Dalmatian Breed Standard, as Drafted by William Faulkner

The Sound and the Spotting

They said the dog had always been there, though naturally this was not true because no dog has always been anywhere, not even in that country where memory lay upon the land like the heat and the roads ran red beneath the carriage wheels and the horses knew, before the men did, that something white and spotted was moving beside them in the dust.

He stood there in the yard, poised and watchful, neither coarse nor fragile, with the strength of labor in him and yet no heaviness, as though every bone and muscle had been laid down according to some old arithmetic remembered by the body after the mind had forgotten it. He was square enough in outline, the distance from shoulder to earth answering the distance from breastbone to buttock, because imbalance was a kind of dishonesty and this dog, whatever else might be said of him, had not been made to lie.

His head was neither too broad nor too narrow, but proportioned to the rest of him, carried with the quiet assurance of something that had once run beneath the axles of kings. His expression was intelligent and alert. Not pleading. Not vacant. Certainly not shy. He watched strangers as a courthouse watches strangers: without panic, without welcome, and without forgetting.

The skull was flat above and moderately broad between the ears, and the stop was clear but not abrupt, for even the planes of his head understood restraint. His muzzle was long and strong, neither pointed like a fox's nor blunt like a hammer, and his lips lay clean against the jaw, without looseness or excess, as though the flesh itself knew that ornament must never interfere with purpose.

His nose was black where his spots were black and brown where his spots were liver, because nature, when properly attended to, finishes what it begins.

His eyes were set moderately apart and held the color appropriate to him: darker in the black-spotted dog, somewhat lighter in the liver, though always bright with intelligence, never protruding, never dull. Around them the rims were complete, their pigment answering the color of the spots, for the dog was not a collection of accidents but one thought carried faithfully from beginning to end.

His ears were of moderate size, broad at the base and tapering toward a rounded point, set high and borne close against the head. They were fine in texture and spotted too, because no part of him had been excused from belonging to the whole.

His teeth met in the clean closure of scissors, the upper incisors fitting closely over the lower, and there was strength in the jaw without brutality. An overshot or undershot mouth was not merely an imperfection but a breaking of covenant, and the judge, who had seen many covenants broken in dogs and men alike, would send such an animal from the ring.

The neck was well arched and sufficiently long, free of throatiness, flowing into shoulders laid back with purpose. The topline remained level. His chest was deep and capacious without becoming broad and cumbersome, reaching toward the elbow and providing room enough for the heart and lungs that had carried his kind mile after mile beside horses whose names nobody remembered.

The ribs were well sprung but not barrel-shaped. The underline rose moderately toward the flank. His loin was strong and muscular, slightly arched, and his back was powerful without being long, for endurance does not arise from excess but from the right arrangement of necessary things.

His tail continued the line of the back, broad at its root and tapering toward the end, reaching approximately to the hock. He carried it with a slight upward curve, but never curled over the back, because gaiety was permitted and vanity was not.

The forelegs were straight and strong, with substantial bone yet no coarseness. His elbows lay close to the body. His pasterns yielded slightly, enough to absorb the miles, but did not collapse beneath them. Behind, the quarters were powerful, the stifles well bent and the hocks low, parallel, and cleanly defined.

His feet were compact and round, with well-arched toes and tough elastic pads, the nails black or brown according to the spotting, though a mixture might occur. They were not hare feet, loose and elongated, but catlike instruments built to strike the earth and leave it again without waste.

And then there was the coat, short and dense and fine and close, sleek beneath the hand, with a natural brightness that no oil and no deception could imitate.

The ground color was pure white.

Upon it lay the spots.

Not patches thrown carelessly like spilled ink, not roaning, not muddy intermixture, but round, clearly defined markings, distinct and evenly distributed, varying from the size of a dime to that of a half-dollar, smaller upon the head, legs, and tail. They were black or they were liver. They were never both.

The judge had once seen a tricolor dog, black-spotted with tan markings where no tan markings belonged, and the animal had been beautiful in the tragic manner of things that cannot be permitted. Beauty was not always correctness. Desire was not law. The dog left the ring.

So too would any dog marked in colors other than black or liver, because the standard remembered what fashion forgot.

In height the dog stood between nineteen and twenty-four inches at the withers, whether male or female, though the whole animal mattered more than the isolated number so long as he remained within it. Yet any dog above twenty-four inches had crossed a boundary that sympathy could not move. The measure came down. The truth stood still.

His movement was the final testimony.

He did not mince. He did not paddle or weave or labor beneath himself. He moved with a steady and effortless stride, the forelegs reaching freely while the hindquarters drove with power, the feet tending toward a single line as speed increased. His topline held firm. His elbows did not turn out. His hocks did not twist inward or fling themselves aside.

He covered ground as though there were always more ground beyond it.

For this was the purpose beneath the spots and the history beneath the beauty: not merely to stand beneath lights while strangers compared shoulders and tails, but to endure — to travel beside the coach through dust and heat, to guard what moved in darkness, to remain when weaker creatures tired, and to rise the next morning ready to go again.

His temperament must therefore be stable and outgoing, dignified but not timid, alert but not quarrelsome. Shyness was alien to him. So was savagery. He might reserve judgment, as intelligent creatures often do, but he must not surrender himself to fear.

And the judge, circling him once more, understood that perfection had never existed in any living thing and that standards were written not because perfection could be possessed but because without the attempt everything would decline — the shoulders growing upright, the bodies long, the bone coarse, the spots confused, until the old carriage dog remained only in photographs and in the failing recollections of old men sitting beneath fans in rooms gone yellow with summer.

So the dog stood while the hands passed over him and the measuring wicket waited nearby and the other dogs breathed along the ring, each bearing the hopes and compromises of those who had bred them.

Then he moved.

White body, dark spots, head carried high, tail following the line behind him.

He went around the ring once and then again, balanced and powerful and seemingly tireless, until for a moment the walls fell away and there were horses ahead of him and a road beneath him and the long vanished coach rolling through the dusk.

And he ran beside it, as he had been made to run, while the dust rose behind them and the whole lost country watched him pass.