CHAPTER VIII 



Training a Field Dog 



INNUMERABLE are the books on the subject of training 

 dogs for shooting, yet the general principles are the same that 

 were told more than three hundred years ago. Changes 

 in the method of capture have called for changes in the 

 duties of the dogs used for finding the game, but the ground 

 plan is the same as it was probably four hundred years ago, and since then 

 it is only additional stories of education on the old foundation. The subject 

 is not a complex one by any means and no one method is the Simon-pure to 

 the exclusion of all others. Like the adding of a column of figures, one 

 man does it from top to foot and another goes up the column. It is not 

 the method, but the care exercised in applying the method, which insures 

 in each case the correctness of the total. So also in the training of a dog, 

 each of a dozen books on the subject varies slightly from the others, but all 

 arrive at the same end of obedience inculcated and certain things ac- 

 complished. 



The education of a child is not attained in a year or two, nor do we 

 expect a neglected child to accomplish solely on account of his age what 

 another gradually educated one can do. We must approach the subject 

 of dog training rationally and with the thorough understanding that while 

 compared with many animals the dog is exceedingly intelligent, he is yet an 

 exceedingly ignorant one when compared with the human family. He is 

 an animal you cannot argue with, nor is it any use telling him why he must 

 not do a certain thing or why he must do something in a certain way. 

 You have to make him do the things required of him in the way desired 

 and check him when he goes wrong till the one way becomes habit, and he 

 knows he will be punished if he does anything else. 



In these days when well-bred dogs are so exceedingly cheap, it is well 

 to spend a little money in getting the right sort of dog to train, A great 

 many people imagine that because a dog has a pretty good pedigree he must 

 necessarily prove a good field dog. It is the same in dogs as with us, and 



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