Part 13

A study of the matter is greatly complicated by the fact that game birds give out no scent when crouching, fearful, under a falcon, and this hawk most certainly does not rely upon his nose to help him discover his prey. To understand why the power of retaining the scent should have been evolved, by the survival of the fittest, it is necessary to go back to the wilderness stage of our islands. Probably the first gamekeeper’s duties were performed by the slayers of wolves, at any rate in historic times, and we have no occasion to try and take a peep at the cave bear in his British den. The country was much more wooded than it is now, and it is clear that those falcons that only kill in the air would go hungry in woodlands had it not been for the earth-crawling vermin that flushed game for them.

The falconers are now proud of teaching a hawk to “wait on” in the air while a pointer is at work, but if falcons ever hunted in a brushwood country in a state of nature, that is exactly what they would have had to do for their friends the wolves, since they could not flush for themselves, and could not kill until a flush had occurred. It is consequently quite likely that waiting on is a latent instinct in the long-winged falcons, and equally, therefore, retaining the scent was a protection against beast and bird alike.

It is a confirmation of this theory, that the birds that in incubation secure safety by watchfulness, such as the lapwings, retain their scent neither in incubation nor at any other time, but exude it while they are hatching.

THE PURCHASE OF POINTERS AND SETTERS

Most people have to buy their dogs for the moors, or to hire them. During June and July large numbers are annually sent up to Aldridge’s, in St. Martin’s Lane. There are a very few general rules which may save a buyer from disappointment.

In nearly all cases the vendors offer to show dogs on game before the sales. It is obviously the best way to go, or send, and have them viewed upon game. The first question always to be asked about young dogs is whether they are gun-shy, and in a trial when no game is being shot it is wise to use the gun, but not fair to use it over much. A dog that has been used to having a shot or two fired over it during an hour’s breaking is not necessarily ready to undergo the bewildering experience of a dozen discharges in close proximity and in quick succession when no intention is obvious. Even on the moors, on the 12th of August, the use of the gun should be tempered with discretion, whether the puppies are inclined to be nervous or not. Besides, this is obvious wisdom from another point of view. Your puppy will do as much work as an equally well-made old dog if you “nurse” him; but if, on the contrary, you allow him to run himself out at the first start, he will soon do it, and will not “come” again that day.

Probably the best way is to make a rule, for the few early days, always to take every puppy up after the first find and killing of grouse. Allow him to point dead and make a fuss over the birds killed, but then have him led away 300 yards behind the firing line, where every shot heard will add to his anxiety to make more acquaintance with the gun, provided your dog-boy knows how not to be severe. In an hour, probably, the young dog will be made for life by this treatment; but, as one can never tell, it is safest to proceed thus for a few days, and meantime the puppy may have fresh short runs at intervals of an hour or two. This refers to highly broken puppies, and not to the wild, sport-spoiling sort. The former are never so good as when they have the keen edge on; the latter are never worse than with it on. Such dogs are too wild to be of use all the morning, and too tired all the afternoon, so that the points one has to make sure of in purchasing pointers and setters are—

Absence of gun-shyness.

Steady pointing.

Freedom from chase.

Dropping to wing, gun, and hand.

A fair amount of ability to go, with a prospect of staying when in working condition.

A good nose.

Answering to whistle.

With these qualities good sport will be assured, although the most particular will require in addition good backing. It is the quality most often absent in good puppies, and luckily can most easily be dispensed with. There are hundreds of shooters over dogs who never saw good backing, as most people are satisfied when the dog behind takes up an attitude of steadiness, and they do not ask unpleasant questions as to its nature. In practice a double point is often as good as a back, and it is not difficult to understand how some people may get to prefer that the dog behind is on the spot. For one thing, he is then safe from doing undetected damage, and is ready to assist in roding out close-lying birds as soon as his companion needs help.

Between this and the most striking field trial backing there is a happy middle course, which used to be considered the most perfect, and is so now, but it would be unfair to expect it when strange dogs meet each other at field trials. It consists in a perfect sympathy with the pointing dog, so that the animal which has not got the scent feels it through the “thought reading” of his companion. One cannot suppose there is conscious imitation of movement, yet so perfect has occasionally been the imitation of the movements of the advance dog by the one behind, that, step for step, stop for stop, crouch for crouch, and drop for drop, the one has copied the every action of the other, as if the pointing dog’s nervous system was affecting the muscles of both inch by inch. Not only has this been so, but the hesitation of a lifted fore leg has been reflected by the image behind. This kind of thing generally arises from two dogs being constantly used together, being particularly equal, and also being frequently tired in their work, so as to make it habitual for one to be glad when the other has found game. At field trials, if the competing dog is not sorry to see a competitor’s point, his master probably is (it may mean £100), and the feelings of the man are apt to be reflected in the dog.

By “nursing” a team of dogs in the way mentioned above, it is wonderful how few will keep a pair of guns going day after day. If dogs are run to a standstill one day, they will want a day’s rest the next, and the fewer dogs a shooter can get through the grouse season with, the better and more experienced each canine servant becomes. Consequently, economy and excellence go hand in hand.

The better to further both designs, the buyer should have some regard for make and shape, and a minor regard for size. The dog-show ideals will not assist much. The principal wants of a working dog, to enable him to go on long, and day after day, are good shoulders. The nearer the tops are together the better—indeed, in imitation of the shape of a good hunter’s withers (that is, narrowing as they approach the top of the back). Powerful muscles in the hind legs, especially in the second thighs, big hocks set low down and well bent stifle joints, but not necessarily well bent hock joints, are all essentials, but only in proportion to the weight to be moved. Big fore legs below the knee and loins the same width from end to end—that is, with no dip horizontally or vertically in the middle—is part of the formation essential to stamina. But, after all, the only point wanted is proportion. With true balance the lighter a dog weighs the better, and yet the bigger he is the better too. This is only saying that the lighter and stronger he is for his size the better.

If it is impossible to see dogs out before auction days arrive, the safest way is to pick out some owner who sells with a good description, and who is good for powder and shot in the event of a mistake being made. Then the buyer has what amounts to a guarantee, and one that has often been acted upon. But unless the purchase is of well seasoned dogs, that have been the chief helps to some well-known sportsmen, it is always safest to go exclusively for field trial blood.

The chances are that young dogs of this blood will be far better than their owners know, and will come on in a surprising manner after a little shooting over, whereas coarse-bred dogs, that have been shot over a season, will be going back, and in most cases will have probably learnt some bad habits.

Nobody can decide for another how many dogs will do. The men differ even more than the dogs. Alternate instead of consecutive days on the moors will mean half the dogs necessary for every day upon the “hull.” In the same way the number may be decreased again by half if the shooting does not start until noon, and a long hour is taken for lunch, and the shooter is back at the lodge by 6 p.m.

Other men will begin shooting at 9 a.m., and will stop work at 6.30 or 7 p.m., which more than doubles the hours. Then the dogs will differ. The average perhaps will not now do more than two hours’ fast work during the day. Nothing is much more distressing in sport than a tired man trusting to a weary dog. That kind of thing is not what one pays big grouse rents for, and nothing less than fast work is likely to satisfy in these days.

No shooter of economic mind in regard to canine assistance does well to permit couples to be used on shooting days. They take half a day’s work out of some dogs, and a good deal out of all. Pointers and setters ought to be taught to walk at heel without couples, and are all the better for being sent in a cart to the fixture. Every ounce of energy should be conserved, as with a Derby horse. If dogs are really broken, they cannot be too fresh. Sometimes they are more fond of galloping than finding game, and then the best thing to do is still to start them fresh, but to run them until they are tired. This soon makes them glad of an excuse to find game. On the other hand, some are too fond of pointing, and will follow up any faint scent, leaving ground and birds right and left behind them, because they are too lazy to quarter. They are not nice dogs, but they are best worked very fresh and only for short spurts.

The author has often been asked what is the best way to treat a dog that false points and draws right into the wind as if he had found game, when he only thinks he may have done so. Probably the best way is to walk past him with a good retriever at heel, one on which reliance can be placed to show whether there is game in front or not. This saves you from the necessity of recognising a false point, either by drawing on the dog or calling him off. In either case your notice would do harm, whereas if you take not the smallest notice of such points the dog will soon learn to rely upon himself, if he has any courage at all.

There is, of course, a great demand for field trial breakers. Good men of this sort always get good posts, but sportsmen who have keepers whom they would like to see better handlers of dogs of any kind, would generally gain their ends by sending their men first to look on at field trials, then buying some six-weeks-old puppies of a good sort, in order to let their breakers compete occasionally at these events. It teaches keepers to view dogs in quite a different way, and they cost no more to keep as highly broken than as slovenly unbroken animals.

THE POINTER

In his beautiful monograph of the pointer, Mr. W. Arkwright, of Sutton Scarsdale, has given to us material and research which settles many things, and enables us to make up our minds with sufficient certainty for our own satisfaction upon many more. That is to say, any of us who take the trouble to refer to Mr. Arkwright’s pages will be able to form a judgment for ourselves upon the origin of the breed, as well as upon the tendency of breeders, for the last century. The author does not propose to quote, as he would like to, from those pages. The pointer is only one small item in a general book on shooting, and this is what the author is bidden to write by his publisher.

A great deal was known about the pointer before Mr. Arkwright took pen in hand, and the views about to be expressed are considered opinions after reading that author’s work, and passing in mental review the breed as it has been known for the last half-century.

The author became possessed of his first pointer about 1860. It was a gift, and came originally from the kennels of the Lord Derby of that time. It was a coarse dog with a coarse stern, so that if Devonshire men introduced foxhound blood in the seventies they were not responsible for the coarse sterns, or not entirely.

Mr. William Arkwright holds that any foxhound blood is bad; it must therefore have tried him very highly when he discovered that all pointers are the descendants of hounds. Doubtless there is a difference between hounds, and possibly the foxhound is the last kind one would wish a pointer to resemble; but, after all, a hound’s business is to catch and kill, whatever sub-title he may claim, and consequently it follows that pointers were evolved from dogs whose business was to catch and kill. If, therefore, our dogs are sufficiently opposed in instincts to their ancestors, there can only be a sentimental objection to a perceptible external trace of hound. As a matter of fact, half the pointers seen at field trials have _too much_ “point,” and not one in fifty too little. No doubt it was the tendency for the natural point to increase in every generation that caused the sportsmen of Colonel Thornton’s period (about 1800 a.d.) to cross with the foxhound.

The pointer undoubtedly came to this country both from France and Spain. The former was a light made and the latter a heavy dog. They were apparently not related, but both became the ancestors of the modern pointer. With all this chance of cross breeding, our grandfathers do not appear to have been satisfied, and were for ever trying other crosses to improve their breeds. Colonel Thornton had a remarkable dog by a foxhound, and other sportsmen had very celebrated droppers—that is, crosses between pointer and setter. It came to be the fashion to think that these crosses never perpetuated their own merit in the next generation, and they got a bad name in consequence. Had this not been the case, probably no pure bred setters or pointers would have been handed down to us, and perhaps there were none so handed on. It seems to the author that there must have been ancestral reasons of the most imperative kind for the differences as found in noted strains of pointers in the middle of the nineteenth century.

My experience has shown that cross breeding does not of necessity imply equal degrees of cross blood in the offspring. It never implies half and half; and although it generally does mean cross breeding to some slight extent, that slight cross can be eradicated in future generations by selection. Of all means of selection by externals for blood, colour and coat are the most trustworthy. It is exceedingly strange that dogs of the same ancestry but of different colours can be bred together for twenty generations and never blend colours in the offspring. This blending of colour happens but very rarely, and as colour is more or less indicative of blood, almost certainly for one, so it remains through many, generations. In discussing setters the author has had occasion to relate more fully his own experience of this remarkable tenacity of colour, in spite of colour crossing, and also to note the curious fact that along with colour is inherited much of the character that originally belonged to or accompanied it.

The writer would therefore divide pointers in his own mind into three great modern families, each of which has both the Spanish and French pointer as a base. These branches are:—

1. Those that have setter indications, including the majority of lemon-and-white ones, and those of the “ticked” varieties.

2. Those which resemble the greyhound in formation and in fineness of stern, and have a tendency to have feet like the greyhound. They are often whole-coloured like it too.

3. Those which seem to trace to the foxhound, by reason of their “cat” feet, thick coats, and coarse sterns.

Whether the origins suggested are correct or not, there is a very great difference between breeds at present, and some internal qualities seem to be most often found with certain colours and formations. For instance, the “dish-face” characteristic of the setter is most often found in the lemon-and-white pointer. The “Roman” profile characteristic of the hound is most often found in the liver-and-white sort, and the very fine stern and hare feet, the stern often with a tendency to curl up, is found most often in the whole-coloured pointers.

Again, a tucked-up, racing appearance is generally seen in old pictures and present-day dogs associated with the whole or self-coloured pointers; a high or foxhound carriage of stern occurs with the liver-and-white; and long backs are most often seen in lemon-and-white specimens. The long backs have been partly bred out of the setter, but he formerly shared them with his collateral relation the spaniel, and even now he is a longer dog than the pointer.

Of all these races the greyhound type is the most perfectly formed in body. The dish-faced lemon-and-white kind appear to be the most affectionate (spaniel-like); and the hardest workers, with the hardest constitutions, the author believes to be the liver-and-white sort. The principal colours of the original French and Spanish pointers were probably black-and-white and liver-and-white, some of them having very little white, so that it is not suggested that the supposed crossing was alone responsible for the colour.

The first time a tendency to “grey” was noticed by the author was in the “ticked” pointer Romp, run at a field trial about 1870 in Devonshire by Mr. Brackenbury. The pedigree of this bitch was, to say the least, defective, and the “belton” markings, as also the whole conformation of the animal, was suggestive of the setter. Romp’s Baby, a descendant of the above Romp and similar in markings, was also setter-like in build, in feet, and in work. The aforesaid Romp laid the foundation for the best race of pointers in America, but unfortunately most of the blood has been lost to this country. The profuse ticked markings are rarely seen, but when they do appear it is easy to trace the character of the Romp family.

Amongst all the pointers and setters the writer has seen he would be puzzled to name the best, but he can say without the smallest hesitation that Romp’s Baby was by far the best small one.

Sir Richard Garth’s Drake was the best pointer that ever contested a field trial, in the author’s judgment. He was a large dog of the liver-and-white variety described above, but with a little of the body formation of the whole-coloured variety, and a good deal of the dish-face of the lemon-and-white ones. The author remembers this dog’s maternal grandsire, Newton’s Ranger, a very big animal of great refinement, and with wonderful length of head and neck. There is no doubt Drake got his quality from here, and for the rest he was descended from the kennels of Lords Sefton, Lichfield, Derby, Mr. Cornwall Leigh, and Mr. Edge, and the Stud Book gives him a Spanish pointer in tail-male. He was a revolution and a revelation in field work, proving for the first time that the utmost care was to be had with racing speed and with the greatest boldness. Perhaps it is wrong to say “was to be had,” for all these qualities in a pointer have never quite been collected in one individual since. Only one son of Drake that the writer saw had any pretence to his sire’s speed, and that one appeared to have _no nose_ whatever; whereas Drake was as phenomenal for nose as for care, speed, and boldness. If there was any foxhound in this fine liver-and-white dog, it must have been very cleverly bred out. On the other hand, his small counterpart Romp, of the blue mottled colour with tan on her legs, might have suggested hound, but not foxhound, as much as setter, by her colour.

On the evidence, the author is inclined to suggest that these two wonderful animals owe their vigour and unique qualities to a not very remote cross of blood. We have it that Drake’s paternal grandsire was a Spanish pointer, and we have Romp’s appearance and colour to declare her no pure bred pointer.

The next best performers of the period, but with a great gap between, were Mr. Lloyd Price’s Belle, bred by Lord Henry Bentinck, but without pedigree given, and Mr. Sam Price’s Bang. The author is not certain whether the general opinion is that Mr. Sam Price went to the foxhound, and that Bang owed his substance and character to the cross, but he was certainly different in type from those other Devonshire pointers, Sancho and Chang, that won on the show bench about the same period, and were entirely pointer-like.

Without in any way insisting upon the origins of the different types and colours above described, there is no doubt that some difference of ancestry at a remote or recent period has been responsible for the characteristics. Consequently, for practical purposes and for breeding, the specimens most marked with the characteristics peculiar to each kind may be treated as distinct strains of blood, although it may not be known what that blood is. To make the author’s position more clear, he would say that if a lemon-and-white and a whole-black pointer came in the same litter they would probably be related in blood, as they certainly would be on paper; but the blood relationship might be very slight indeed, for one would be, as it is now expressed, a “brother” of some remote black ancestor, and the other a “brother” of some remote lemon-and-white ancestor. But this is not _wholly_ true; because in breeding together brothers and sisters both of one colour, other colours will very occasionally come in the offspring. The influence of sire and dam is shown to be much less than was previously thought possible, but it is not shown to be absent, in spite of the cell and germ theory.

It is obvious that, in starting to keep pointers, a prospective breeder must settle on one or other of the three existing types, and it is necessary for such a beginner to know that he may cross them one with the other with great constitutional advantage, without much fear of blending type or blood, provided he selects for type and character by means of colour. For instance, he may cross a black pointer with a lemon-and-white or liver-and-white, and repeat this in every generation, and yet the puppies that come black will be of one type, and those that come lemon-and-white will be of the other. The cases of blending will be very rare indeed, and can easily be discarded.