Training and Management 69 



qualified messengers, and without a natural gift for dis- 

 cerning the individual nature of each dog, the instructor 

 may very easily lose patience, and reject a half-trained 

 recruit which later would turn out a first-class worker. 

 At the same time, he must know when he is up against a 

 real shirker, and save unnecessary waste of time in training. 

 Rapidity of output is of the highest importance, and only 

 a long previous experience with dogs, on a large scale, will 

 give the necessary understanding of the methods of rapid 

 training. The dogs should not be under one year, nor older 

 than four years. It is better, if the supply is sufficient, to 

 confine the choice of dogs to those of the male sex. 



The heavy bombardments which are a feature of modern 

 warfare render communication with the front line exceed- 

 ingly difficult to maintain. The object of the use of mes- 

 senger dogs, therefore, is : 



i. To save human life. 



2. To accelerate dispatch-carrying. 



Telephones soon become useless, and the danger to the 

 human runner is enormous. Added to the difficulties are 

 the shell-holes, the mud, the smoke and gas, and darkness. 

 It is here that the messenger dog is of the greatest assistance. 

 The broken surface of the ground is of small moment to it, 

 as it lightly leaps from point to point. It comes to its duty 

 in the field well broken to shell-fire, and so has no fear. 

 Its sense of direction is as certain at night as in the day, 

 and equally so in mist or fog. Being a smaller and more 

 rapidly-moving object, the danger of its being hit is much 

 less than in the case of a runner, and it is a fact that during 

 the war casualties were extraordinarily low among the 

 messenger dogs, especially when it is taken into considera- 

 tion that their work was always in the hottest of the fight. 

 There is a most remarkable record of the tenacity and 



