Hound of the Baskervilles

“He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did - some little distance off, but fresh and clear"
"Footprints?"
"Footprints."
"A man's or a woman's?"
Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered: "Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”
For the second in our series of famous dogs from fiction we focus on the Hound of the Baskervilles, the malevolent beast of legend that haunts Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Baskerville family. An altogether more gruesome prospect than that of Fang the boarhound, it is the task of Sherlock Holmes and his faithful sidekick Watson to unearth the mystery behind the hound’s attacks. Readers are warned that this article will contain spoilers, which, especially in a detective novel, will greatly limit your enjoyment of the book.
This, perhaps the most famed of the novels in which Sherlock Holmes appears, sees the famed detective and his sidekick Dr. Watson investigate the mysterious death of a certain Charles Baskerville in the bleak and dreary West Country of England. Though doctors had put the cause of Sir Charles’ death to a heart attack, the local doctor, Mortimer, arrived in London to solicit Holmes’ help, as there was one interesting aspect to Charles’ demise. Based on the surrounding footprints it seemed Sir Charles’ had died whilst running from a gigantic dog.

This dog, dubbed the Hound of the Baskervilles, had haunted the family for generations. According to legend, the hellhound had ripped out the throat of Sir Charles’ ancestor, Hugo Baskerville, two hundred years earlier. A witness testified to the true horror of the animal’s appearance “there ran mute behind him such a hound of hell as God forbid should ever be at my heels”.
Though making very few physical appearances, the mere mention of the beast is seen to cause terror, its wailing howls echoing over the barren landscape and chilling even Dr. Watson’s stout heart. It is presumed, even by Dr. Mortimer, to be a hound of a supernatural nature.
It is the scarcity of its appearances that lead to the growth in the mystery and superstition regarding the animal. As with anything unknown, not knowing what to expect heightens the sense of fear felt by all. All but Sherlock Holmes that is. Conan Doyle used the Hound of the Baskervilles as more than just a mere dog. The Hound of the Baskervilles is used to represent the absurdity and illogic of those given to believe folk tales, rather than look rationally at the evidence of events to come to conclusions. When it is suggested that he will be dealing with a supernatural adversary sent by the devil, Holmes is quick to pour scorn on the idea, ‘The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?’, he states to Watson.
The conclusion reveals Holmes’ rationality to triumph over the locals’ superstition. There was indeed a hound, but it had only been in the area a little over a year, covered in phosphorus by its master, Mr. Stapleton, to augment its otherworldly appearance. But it was not a dog that anyone needed to flee from, Sir Charles had a heart attack fleeing from a myth, not an animal.
To you the reader, you should use this as an example to those friends of yours who fear dogs and demonstrate to them their irrationality, that their fear comes from the unknown and lack of understanding. It is not a fear of the animals themselves.