182 KRIDER'S SPORTING ANECDOTES. 



The next morning, breakfast being over, and 

 all things in readiness for an early start, if you 

 have any distance to ride to the grounds which 

 you design to shoot over, by all means take in 

 the dogs. Apart from the looks of the thing, 

 they are liable to be lost on the road in a strange 

 neighborhood, and to be worried by country 

 curs. It is the practice of a sportsman early to 

 accustom his brace of dogs to their places under 

 his feet in a wagon, where they will soon learn 

 to lie still and mute, without discommoding each 

 other or their masters. A dog thus treated 

 enjoys a ride to and from the grounds quite as 

 much as the shooter, and most assuredly equally 

 deserves it. Several instances have come under 

 our notice, of valuable dogs which have been 

 fagged to death by the carelessness or brutality 

 of their owners, in forcing them to run for many 

 miles in warm weather after a hard hunt. Such 

 heartlessness cannot be too severely condemned, 

 and w r e will venture to say that the persons who 

 were guilty of it, never felt a single spark of the 

 generous feeling inherent in the breast of a 

 sportsman. It should be a standing rule with 

 every shooter who takes a dog into the field, that 

 when I ride my dogs ride also. We have had 

 occasion to notice in our sporting tours, a selfish 



