Polish Hound

“The hounds went into the forest” — with that sentence Stefan Żeromski opens his novel Ashes, and it is probably the most famous sentence about dogs in all of Polish literature. Few people remember what happened next in the novel. Anyone who owns one of these hounds knows perfectly well what happens next in life. The Polish Hound, the Ogar, is a dog that goes into the forest: nose to the ground, unhurried, stubborn, and a very long way. A black back, tan sides, long ears and the expression of someone with something important to think over. It has been going into the forest for centuries. Similar dogs were described by the medieval chronicler Gallus Anonymus, in the fourteenth century they were kept at the royal court, and in Mickiewicz's national epic Pan Tadeusz they have their place in the fourth book.

After the Second World War it came close to that sentence being the only trace left of the breed. It was saved by Colonel Piotr Kartawik, who in 1959 brought three dogs — Burzan, Zorka and Czita — from the Smorgonie area in Poland's former eastern borderlands. He named his kennel simply “z Kresów”, “from the Borderlands”. He lived in a city, so to test his dogs in the field he took them to the forest by tram. The hounds rode into the forest; Żeromski had not foreseen that. In 1964 a standard was written on the basis of Kartawik's dogs, and two years later the breed was recognised internationally. At the same time Colonel Józef Pawłusiewicz was breeding a lighter, faster type, which became the Polish Hunting Dog, today a separate breed.

The Ogar is built for stamina, not for speed, and applies that principle to the whole of life. It matures slowly: for two or three years it is a puppy in the body of a thirty-kilo dog. It walks with dignity, thinks things over at length, sleeps deeply. On a walk you do not go with it from point A to point B but from scent to scent, each requiring a separate analysis, so five hundred metres can take forty minutes. It is gentle with its household, patient with children, and stubborn in a very polite way: it refuses nothing, it simply has not got round to it yet. It also has a voice. In old Polish nobody said that an Ogar barks. They said it plays, as one plays an instrument. The male plays bass, the female a tone higher, and both clearly enjoy their own sound. It announces guests at full volume and then usually considers the matter closed. In a block of flats this repertoire quickly finds an audience, though not necessarily a grateful one.

That voice is not a flaw, however. It is the cleverest thing the Ogar has. A dog that disappears among the trees with its nose to the ground would be lost to its person within a minute if it stayed silent. The Ogar does not stay silent. It goes, and all the while it says where it is: here, now here, further on now. The voice is a rope by which it keeps you with it while it walks away. And that is the whole dog: it has to go into the forest, but it cannot leave without a word. At home it does the same, only more quietly. Leaving the room, it looks back. Coming back, it reports in with its nose under your hand. And when it is left alone it plays loudly enough to be heard wherever you are, because someone who has spent a lifetime letting you know where it has gone does not understand why you walked out without a word.

Every return from the forest ends at the bowl, and here two things need remembering. First, the Ogar has a deep chest and is at risk of bloat, so it eats two or three smaller meals rather than one large one. Second, it needs an hour or two of exercise a day. When it does not get it, it puts on weight quickly, and the portion then has to be reduced instead of waiting for the dog to run it off.

Żeromski left his hounds in the forest and spent the rest of the novel on people. We never found out whether they came back.

Yours does. You will hear it before you see it, and it will be just about suppertime.