INTRODUCTORY. 



The general improvement in expert training, in this coun- 

 try, had its inception with the inauguration of field trials. 

 There were a few, very few, expert trainers prior to that 

 period, but they had a limited fame and their methods of 

 training were known only to themselves. Each trainer af- 

 fected to have some particular hobby in his particular system, 

 which he claimed to be superior to all others, although as 

 each maintained an air of secrecy in his methods it is diffi- 

 cult to imagine by what process one method could be com- 

 pared with another. Considering training as an art, it had 

 very little claim to it at that time. Even amongst those 

 who professed to be experts, there were the widest differences 

 of opinion in respect to the details of training, and the 

 manner in which a dog should work after being trained. 

 However, really expert trainers were so few that they were 

 not a representative body of the average trainers. The typ- 

 ical trainer usually combined training with market shooting, 

 and as the prices of training in such hands varied from ten 

 to twenty-five dollars, the education of the dog was always 

 subservient to the success of the gun, the latter being the 

 most profitable. The dog was never required to do much 

 more than to point and, with less certainty, to retrieve. The 

 success of the typical old-time trainer as a hunter was 

 usually erroneously accepted as conclusive proof of his 

 ability as a trainer. Each section had one or more of such 

 local celebrities; in many instances he was illiterate, a loafer 

 in summer, a little dissipated periodically, and at all times 

 had every indication of chronic, incurable seediness. As a 

 class, they were no small factor in bringing the dog and 

 gun into disrepute, the latter two being unjustly considered- 

 the cause of the evil instead of an available means to sus- 

 (xvii) 



