Part 12

If your puppy has unfortunately learnt to chase hares or to kill chickens before you begin with it, severe measures will have to be taken to cure these crimes; but this should not be done until after the pupil has been entered to and become fond of game, so that it is essential to enter a hare-chaser where there are no hares, and a chicken-killer where there are no roosters. The love of one kind of game is half a cure of a too energetic fondness for another, and in order to set up this love of game to its fullest extent, your pupil must neither see hare nor think hare until the entry on game is complete. If you thrash one minute for chasing chickens, the next your pupil will be half-hearted about finding partridges, and will probably blink them when found.

The author was very successful at field trials, and in having perfectly obedient high rangers of wonderful courage and endurance, and this success was attained on the principle of never giving the pupils a chance to do wrong until they were well established in the practice of doing right. That is to say, until they would quarter fast and freely, and find and point game without caution, and back each other at any distance, they were not tempted by the sight or scent of hares, or not by intention. Afterwards they have to learn to hunt for partridges in the midst of hares and with the scent of them everywhere, and it is only by their extra fondness for winged game that they will hunt across and across the foot scent of dozens of hares without taking any notice of it, and will nevertheless point the body scent of a hare when they find the beast in its seat.

All this comes to the high-couraged dog practically by nature, provided the breaker begins at the right end of the education and takes step by step, as suggested here in default of a better method. There will be no shouting and storming, or whipcord and wailing, but a steady progress towards perfection, granting always that the pupil has nose, sense, pace, and stamina.

Pointing and backing may or may not come naturally when the youngster finds that he cannot catch his birds after a few tries, but they are easily encouraged to come sooner by the use of the voice on the hand-broken pupil, or by the use of the check cord. It is, however, just as well to let a puppy chase the birds until he naturally points them. This is education of the best kind in “locating” the game, which implies the quick recognition of the difference between body and foot scents of birds. In the same way it is a good plan to let a puppy run in a few times to a pointing dog to flush and chase his game. This is not doing wrong, for up to this stage the dog will have received no intimation that chasing game and flushing it are wrong, except that hereditary instinct may prompt the puppy to point and also to back.

It is not well to insist upon instant dropping to wing, until a young dog has learnt how to point steadily and to draw up boldly to the game at the side of his breaker. This becomes a nerve-trying task if a sudden rush of wings is also associated with orders to “drop,” and it is well to confirm the natural attitude on point, which will generally be beautiful, before running a risk of the young dog learning to confuse the point with the order to drop to wing.

The rush in, on the rise of game, is better first checked by the hand upon the collar, or on the cord, if one is used. There is no use in calling “To-ho” to a pointing dog, or in using any words of caution. A broken dog requires no caution, and a partly broken or unbroken one is to be taught to rely upon his nose, and not on the breaker’s voice, for his knowledge of when he should point. If the breaker knows best, where is the use of the dog? If the latter points or draws and then moves on, let him do it; it is educational, and one mistake may prevent a hundred; but if you “to-ho” a false point you are making a bad dog by it, and if you “to-ho” when there is game you are teaching the dog that you are going to tell him when to point, and that you certainly cannot judge of by the dog’s manner if he does not know himself.

One of the principal things to teach is quartering, and this is often the natural outcome of walking directly up wind with your pupil. It is generally instinctive to the well-bred dog to cross the wind to and fro. But this natural instinct will be unhinged by any change of direction, so that a breaker who started his puppy in different and changing methods, in regard to the wind, would find him ranging, but not quartering, and would observe the puppy at the end of a cast as likely to turn down wind as up. For this reason, until a confirmed range has been established by walking into the wind, with the puppy beating from side to side of his breaker, no other method of beating a field should be attempted. Even with the precaution of always walking into the wind, the puppy is not unlikely to turn down wind at one end or the other of his cast. That is a bad fault in itself, and bespeaks flighty disposition, and a bad nose besides. There is always scent of kinds, we may suppose, up wind of the puppy, which ought to turn his investigating nose into the wind instead of the other way, as so often happens. The breaker may be troubled to correct this habit, but, as it is partly owing to the dog’s love of his breaker that he forgets the game and turns back, it can be cured by making the puppy more fond of finding game, and by tiring him, until he has to think of the nearest way. But as for other reasons tiring a puppy in the breaking season is bad, when no game is being shot, the trouble can be overcome by the breaker walking near the hedge on the side of the field the pupil turns the wrong way, and then, by the teacher making haste as the puppy approaches that side, he will be automatically turned the right way. Strangely, most puppies turn wrong at one end and not at the other. If they turn wrong at both ends, they are probably hopeless fools that are not worth breaking.

A want of good “backing” may be very common from many different causes. It generally comes from an absence of interest in the point of another dog, and consequently is more noticed in spring breaking than in autumn shooting. If dogs are left to themselves in autumn, they will nearly always back, or run in and take another’s point. The latter is objectionable, and may cause flushing by either dog, or by both. But it shows interest in the point, and that is what the breaker has to work upon. In the spring breaking not infrequently a puppy will go half a mile round in order to avoid being obliged to see and back a point. That is because nothing of excitement ever comes of a back before the shooting season, and in order to make a perfect backer of a dog of this character (one that is obviously plucky and no fool) he must have his interest created in the other’s point. This is very easy to accomplish. One of the chief causes of bad backing is, naturally, false pointing. Like the man who is always crying “Wolf!” the imaginative dog is not believed by his fellows, and when pointing dogs are made to back up false points they perform the operation as an act of unwilling obedience, and do not assume those attitudes that are so pleasing in the willing dog. It is therefore quite impossible to have good backing in a brace of dogs, if one, or both, false point. But there is a way in which a useless false pointer (and they all are useless) can be made to give a good lesson in backing and one not easily forgotten, that should not be often, if at all, repeated. It is a trick on the dog to be educated, and as such must not be found out, otherwise its virtue will be gone.

The plan is to get a wing-clipped partridge and to fasten to its wing a leather strap, and to this latter a string of 20 yards length with a peg at its end, around which the string can be wound. All together can be put into a cartridge bag, for choice one of waterproofed canvas, because it is not certain whether, in any other sort, the dog will discover what is being carried on the shoulder of his trainer, and it is important he should not discover. Then it is necessary to hunt the prospective backer with the false pointer. The latter will soon get a point, which the puppy will ignore or investigate. In either case, wait until the pupil has done the field and comes back; he will then again see the false point, and before he gets down wind of it he must be dropped by hand. He is by this time “cock sure” his companion is pointing nothing; but in his absence you have unrolled the string from your partridge and put the peg in the ground at a place up wind of the pointing dog, but down wind of the spot where you intend to drop the pupil. You have taken the partridge out of its bag, and, having placed its head under its wing, you have given it two or three swings round, so as to make it giddy. Then you have placed it on the ground lying on that wing under which is its head, and there you have left it. It will lie quite still for a quarter of an hour, if need be. Having gone back to the peg, which must be between the partridge and your young dog for obvious reasons, you give the string a snatch, and up flutters the partridge in full view. The bird will make a racket when he finds himself caught, and will flutter a good deal. When you are quite sure your dog will not join in the chase, you will make as much fuss about catching the bird as possible. You will not let the puppy see what you do when you return the bird to the bag, and you will not let the young dog go down wind of the spot on which the partridge has been fluttering. A clever dog will detect what has happened if you do either, and will take no interest afterwards if it should be necessary to repeat the lesson. After this, go straight home with the dogs in couples, and next day have out for the young one a better companion, that will not false point. It is twenty to one that the first point made in the sight of the youngster will be backed with all the vivacity of a point. In this way you will discover that _one_ good lesson, properly given with no mistake in it, will do more than a year’s drudgery in stopping, scolding, and whipping, when the pupil ought to back.

There are many pointers and setters that will back naturally, but this trait almost implies that they have not as much capacity for finding game as the neighbours that they back up in their points. Indeed, the better the dog is naturally, the greater is the difficulty in persuading him to a spirit of diffidence. For these very good animals the plan has been found the most useful by the author, and a triumph of breaking is to make a perfect backer of a dog so good that he rarely sees a point, because he finds nine-tenths of the game himself. In order to do it, there is a necessity for reducing his own estimation of himself, and luckily this can be done in the manner related without in the smallest degree reducing the finding powers and ranging energy of the most superior dogs.

THE USES OF FIELD TRIALS FOR POINTERS AND SETTERS

Once in a decade it is possible to see at a field trial a bit of work so good that it is safe to say the doer of it will win the stake—it is safe, although when the opinion is formed the rest of the entries have not been seen at work. It would not be safe to say so when acting as judge, or to act upon any such notion. But the writer has ventured the opinion on several occasions when others have been judging, and has always been right. The occasions arise only in those rare circumstances when the scent is as good as can be, and the dog does things that only the very best can do in the most favourable circumstances.

Generally it is unsafe to form any opinions except by comparing the work of one dog with that of another at the same time and place. That is what field trials enable; and it does not follow that when only moderate work is done at them that the doers are only ordinary. Field trials are often held in conditions of scent and weather when the wise shooter would go home. The competitors at these meetings are always picked dogs at home, and have generally beaten “good trial horses” before they show in public. But when shooters go to a trial and unfavourably compare what they see there to experience at home, they may be right, but whenever this comparison has given them confidence enough to enter dogs the latter have invariably been disgraced, unless they happened to be of field trial winning blood. This really answers the question as to what use these institutions are.

On the other hand, it is by no means the most experienced field trial men who have the best chance of victory, provided the canine blood is the same for all competitors.

What natural selection and the survival of the fittest has done for the fox and other scent-hunting animals, field trial selection has done for pointers and setters since the first public trial was held in 1865. It is not contended that working dogs have improved over the whole of this period, but the vast superiority of the field trial breeds over others shows what all would have declined to if it had not been for the institutions that annually indicate the best.

But during the last half-dozen years there has been a general, and it is said unaccountable, lack of good brace work at the field trials. The author has satisfied himself of the reason of this strange lack of the highest exhibition of breaking at a time when the dogs are higher broken and more credit is given for breaking than ever before. This appears paradoxical, but the fact is that the premium on high breaking has led to the choice of dogs as sires and dams that are easy to break, and this again to the discounting of courage. Some worthy usurper, who became a rightful monarch, is said to have watched a spider attempt for nine times to fasten his web upon a coveted spot and succeed in the end. To hunt a brace of dogs properly, it is necessary to have material as persevering as the only spider in history. What is required is that your dogs should find all the game. In order that this should be done, they must beat all the ground, and there is always one corner in a field that nature induces the dogs to leave behind. The corner to right or left of the spot at which the dogs are started is sure to be slightly down wind of the starting-place. The natural tendency is to investigate up wind, and it may be necessary for a breaker to start his dogs ten or twenty times, and to call them back as often, before he can make them understand that they are to “sink the wind,” are to drop back, as it were, behind it, and do the usually neglected corner before pressing forward and investigating the scent of game that is probably all the time coming from up-wind of them. But it is only the very highest-couraged dogs that can be expected to give cheerful obedience during the constant interference that the teaching of this useful lesson involves. The point the author wishes to make is, that it is necessary to breed for courage and break for docility, and that this is exactly contrary to the breeding for docility that has been done. This process, which has been intended to improve breaking, has eliminated the best brace work and the best quartering.

It is not intended to convey the idea that very close quartering is a good feature. The dog should fully occupy his time, and range to the capacity of his nose. To say a dog is going too wide may easily be a great mistake. It is often said that a pointer or setter misses ground, but although some people think that game cannot be missed if ground is beaten in geometric figures, with parallel lines near together, it is often to be observed that those which most obviously leave no ground behind them are just those that leave birds behind them. If we could only smell as dogs do for ten minutes, we should understand them much better. It seems wonderful that these animals can often detect a pair of little partridges at 150 to 200 yards away, while, even in our own hands, we men cannot smell the birds at all. The variety in the olfactory powers of the dog sinks almost at one end to that of the man, but at the other is entirely beyond his power of thinking. Consequently, when we set any limitation on the width of ranging, or the width between the parallels in the range, we are often asking the dogs to beat the ground twice or three times, which is opposed to the best canine nature. The author is careless how much ground dogs leave behind provided they leave no game behind. Consequently, if they start fairly, so as to get the wind of the near corners, they may be assumed to know the measure of their own noses, and to beat wide or narrow, and with parallel quarterings near, or far apart, as necessary. The wider in both cases the better, provided they leave no game behind. If they commit this fault, they are only wild, and may be assumed to be scamping their work.

It has often happened that the most capable dogs in a stake have run great risks of being thrown out for an appearance of scamping their ground, when, as a matter of fact, they were leaving no game behind, and knew it. This generally happens when the scent is extra good and the dogs know that they can take what are regarded as liberties in their range. But when scent is bad, on hot August days, and the pollen is flying from the heather bloom, these wide rangers will be narrow enough, and will be the only dogs that can find at all. Then those that have had for safety to hunt in narrow parallels in good scent, will be as unable as a man to smell a grouse. It is for this reason that the writer, when judging at a field trial, would never condemn wide or forward ranging unless game was actually proved to be left behind. Quartering is the means to an end, and not the end itself, and it was far more effectively done at field trials years ago, before people began to treat it as an end in itself. Since then brace work has declined, and brace work had always been that in which it was expected, and happened, that the winners should find everything on their ground, and neither flush nor miss anything.

The best natural quarterers (or dogs, for that matter) will invariably be those that alter their methods to suit the occasion. When game is scarce, they will hunt wide, because, in the absence of the scent of game pervading the atmosphere, they can detect the presence of the game at far greater distances than when the scent is everywhere.

They will hunt wide also in good scent.

Conversely, in bad scent they will hunt closely, and when birds are plentiful, or scattered and lying close, they will do so also, and to the author this variation of beat to suit the occasion is by far the greatest proof of nose and sense.

Everybody likes to see a dog draw nicely and sharply up a good distance, and point, knowing precisely where the game is; but these appearances are often deceptive. Nobody knows how far the birds have run, or how much of the draw was due to the foot scent and how little to the body scent. These appearances of good nose have to be taken in conjunction with the manner of beating the ground, before a just estimate of the olfactory powers can be quickly formed. This is made all the more difficult, because a dog of poor courage will generally draw to game as soon as he detects foot scents, whereas the highest-couraged and best quarterers will often gallop over those scents, recognising but scouting the temptation, and will only draw up to body scent.

The difference between foot and body scents is not very well understood by anyone except the dog, and not always by him. Very much nonsense has been written on the subject. The author has noticed comments in the Press showing that the writers believed the foot scent to be an emanation from the feet in contact with the ground. The foot scent is the path of scent left by an animal that has moved away. The author has observed it left by a flying grouse, and also by a diving otter. In neither case could the feet have had anything to do with the matter. But that does not help us to know how the dog detects the difference between the volatile matter that comes direct from the game to the dog’s nose, and the same exudation that first hangs in the air, upon the water, bubbles up from the water, clings to vegetation, or to earth, before it reaches the dog’s nose. It is obviously not a question of strength of scent, for a dog having missed a brace of close-crouched partridges will instantly find the spot they rose from after they have gone, proving that, often enough, the foot scent is very much the stronger.

The author has no opinion how it is that some dogs detect the difference between foot and body scent instantly, and others cannot do it. It cannot be that one is more the breath of the hunted animal than the other, because probably the otter evolves no scent except breath when under water, and his line is as huntable to the swimming pack as that of the land quarry to the running hounds. Possibly the actual heat of the volatile exudation may have something to say to the question. Whatever the difference consists of, it is only some dogs that instantly recognise it. These may or may not be animals able to detect a scent a long way off. No great wonder should be occasioned by the inability to be certain: how often do human beings recognise a picture, or a taste, without being able to give either a name?

No attempt will be made to prove what canine-detected scent is, except to this extent. It must be something that our own olfactory nerves work above, or below. Just as there are noises we cannot hear and colours we cannot see, so there are doubtless scents of great power that we nevertheless cannot detect even slightly. A dog will sometimes find and appear to locate correctly a partridge, or rather a pair of them, at 200 yards. We may take those birds in hand and put them to our noses, and even then we cannot detect the faintest scent of any kind. Scent is supposed to spread as the square of the distance, so that 600 feet squared would represent the difference in degree of the scent of the bird in hand and that of the bird 600 feet away. That is to say, one would be 360,000 times as strong as the other, and we cannot detect the strong, whereas the dog finds the weaker one. Surely this is enough to show that it is no question of degree at all, but of something else. Possibly the strong scent of deer and fox that we often do detect is misleading us into the belief that we can sometimes smell what hounds run by. On the other hand, the author has noticed that when he can smell a fox strongest hounds cannot smell him at all, and consequently there is more confirmation that what the canine race hunts by the human nose cannot always detect in any degree whatever.

It has often been affirmed that game birds lose their scent during incubation, and there is no doubt they lose a good deal of it. Hares and vixens heavy with young are said to have a similar protection from their enemies. But in all cases there is scent, only it is different, and not easily recognised by the dogs kept for hunting it. On the other hand, the nests that the pointer and setter cannot find, the terrier, with a worse nose, often does discover, much to the gamekeeper’s grief; and the foxes find great numbers of these nests also, and they do not do it by sight.