POINTERS AND SETTERS 109 



half a mile away nearly, and cannot hear your whistle reminding 

 it of its distance. In the contrariness of canine nature, that is 

 the exact instant the only hare in the parish will select to jump 

 up before your puppy's nose. The strange form and sudden 

 appearance, as from nowhere, will surprise ; another instant, the 

 ancestral wild beast of prey will take possession of your 

 cherished pet, now nearly in the next parish, and you would 

 be helpless to intervene but for the gun in your hand and for 

 its associations with the tree and the cord in the park. You 

 fire at the exact instant before canine surprise is succeeded by 

 a burst of coursing speed, and your pupil is glued to the ground, 

 while your only hare is preserved from extinguishing her race 

 and your chances of a broken dog as well. 



The worst of permitting puppies to chase once is that 

 they soon learn to chase the trail, or " drag," of hare when 

 none has been seen. It is difficult to be sure when a puppy 

 is doing this ; but never wait until you are sure, is the author's 

 suggestion : fire at once. Then, if your young dog has been 

 broken on practical lines, you by one operation serve two 

 ends, for you stop a chase and rebuke your dog if there was a 

 hunt, and if not, you have only given an unnecessary lesson in 

 dropping to shot, which generally does good and never any 

 harm, for it disturbs game far less than whistling or shouting. 



It is not intended here to repeat the elementary advice 

 about hand breaking. It is much more simple to say that a 

 puppy must be talked to like a little child. It will be much 

 quicker than the child to take a meaning, but it remains a 

 child, if a quick one, all the days of its life. 



If your puppy has unfortunately learnt to chase hares or 

 to kill chickens before you begin with it, severe measures will 

 have to be taken to cure these crimes ; but this should not be 

 done until after the pupil has been entered to and become fond 

 of game, so that it is essential to enter a hare-chaser where 

 there are no hares, and a chicken-killer where there are no 

 roosters. The love of one kind of game is half a cure of a 

 too energetic fondness for another, and in order to set up this 

 love of game to its fullest extent, your pupil must neither see 



