236 MODERN TRAINING. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



SHYNESS. 



Gunshyness, whipshyness, blinking, and, frequently, bolt- 

 ing, are all caused by fear, hence they are intimately related 

 so far as corrective treatment is concerned. 



Gunshyness, in some instances, is, by a few sportsmen, 

 supposed to be hereditary, but the writer, in a somewhat ex- 

 tensive experience with gunshy dogs, has never observed 

 any cases which could be said to have the failing from in- 

 heritance. The chief causes are errors in giving the dog 

 his first experience with the report of a gun, a fault com- 

 mon to inexperienced amateurs, and a few who are not 

 inexperienced; and it also maybe caused by many inherited 

 infirmities of the nervous organization of the dog caused 

 by bad breeding. In cases where dogs have degenerated 

 through many generations in this respect, they are timid and 

 easily alarmed at any unusual noise; and being afraid of a 

 gun or other noises is simply peculiar to the degenerated 

 nervous system in each individual, and not to an inherited 

 fear. If such dogs were afraid of a gun alone, therefore 

 indifferent to all other alarming noises, generation after 

 generation, it might then fairly be inferred that the gun- 

 shyness was hereditary; but with nervously excitable dogs 

 such is not the case; they are fearful of all alarming 

 noises. The writer has seen dogs which, when in a room 

 where a clock struck, would bolt out of the door or win- 

 dow in the extreme of fright. The slam of a door, the 



