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CHAPTEE IX. 



DOG-BREAKING 



" But cautions here observe 

 To check their youthful ardour, nor permit 

 The inexperienced younker, immature, 

 Alone to range the woods, or haunt the brake 

 Where dodging conies sport — the laborious chase 

 Shall stunt his growth, and his rash forward youth 

 Contract such vicious habits, as thy care, 

 And late correction never shall reclaim." — Somerville. 



A LTHOUGH there is no royal road to the acquirement of the art of dog-breaking, yet the 

 ^^ acquisition is one comparatively easy of attainment. The great requisites on the part 

 of the trainer are a good stock of patience, which implies the possession of those other most 

 excellent virtues — perseverance, kindness and firmness — and the exercise of such an amount 

 of ordinary common sense as will prevent the retrogression of the pupil from any profici- 

 ency he may once have reached. It is in the power of all of us, though we have not that 

 power in the same degree, to train a dog to be useful in the field ; and the work of the 

 amateur trainer who loves his dogs and never thoughtlessly frets them is often attended 

 with more satisfactory results than reward the efforts of the ordinary professional dog- 

 breaker. And happily it is not necessary that a good trainer should be a particularly good 

 shot. Though, other things being equal, the better the shot so much the better for the dog. 

 The purport, then, of the following remarks is to attempt the explanation of a system which 

 has been found to work very well in the education of the dog for shooting purposes in 

 North China, where nearly all the conditions of climate, scent, nature of the country and 

 nature of the sport are so entirely different from those at home ; for, be it remembered that 

 the long continued droughts of late autumn and the winter months and the system of enrich- 

 ing the land must at times almost efface any trace of scent, while the entire absence 

 of hedged-in fields seriously impairs the trainer's control over his animals, thus necessita- 

 ting a system of breaking differing somewhat from that usually followed in England. Not 

 that a well broken imported dog is not generally better in the field than one reared here, 

 but that the nature of the country and of the shooting does not call for dogs with mathema- 

 tical range who will drop to flush or shot. Here a dog is a Jack-of-all-trades ; he has to 

 beat the open and the covert, to retrieve on land and from water, and too often is called 



