POINTERS AND SETTERS 125 



too fresh. Sometimes they are more fond of galloping than 

 finding game, and then the best thing to do is still to start 

 them fresh, but to run them until they are tired. This soon 

 makes them glad of an excuse to find game. On the other 

 hand, some are too fond of pointing, and will follow up any 

 faint scent, leaving ground and birds right and left behind them, 

 because they are too lazy to quarter. They are not nice dogs, 

 but they are best worked very fresh and only for short spurts. 



The author has often been asked what is the best way to 

 treat a dog that false points and draws right into the wind as if 

 he had found game, when he only thinks he may have done so. 

 Probably the best way is to walk past him with a good retriever 

 at heel, one on which reliance can be placed to show whether 

 there is game in front or not. This saves you from the 

 necessity of recognising a false point, either by drawing on the 

 dog or calling him off. In either case your notice would do 

 harm, whereas if you take not the smallest notice of such points 

 the dog will soon learn to rely upon himself, if he has any 

 courage at all. 



There is, of course, a great demand for field trial breakers. 

 Good men of this sort always get good posts, but sportsmen 

 who have keepers whom they would like to see better handlers 

 of dogs of any kind, would generally gain their ends by sending 

 their men first to look on at field trials, then buying some six- 

 weeks-old puppies of a good sort, in order to let their breakers 

 compete occasionally at these events. It teaches keepers to 

 view dogs in quite a different way, and they cost no more to 

 keep as highly broken than as slovenly unbroken animals. 



