RETRIEVERS AND THEIR BREAKING 183 



retriever of that time. However, she had a good nose and a 

 tender mouth, and is important because probably all the show 

 flat-coated dogs are descended from her. 



All the public retriever trials in the field have not been 

 failures like that at Sleaford, previously mentioned. But 

 they have only become popular with show men quite recently. 

 The latter have very wisely concluded that if they could not 

 snuff out the trials that so frequently exhibited handsome 

 dogs in a poor light, the next best thing to be done was to 

 capture them. In order to do this, a very large number of 

 entries have been made, and as the stake is necessarily limited 

 (20 was the number), this had the effect of keeping out 

 most outsiders. 



Thus at the 1905 trial there were 39 nominations, only 

 20 of which were accepted, and these were made up of 1 5 flat- 

 coated dogs, one Norfolk retriever, two Labrador retrievers, 

 and two brown or liver-coloured dogs, one of which, at least, 

 was not of the dog-show strain in most of his removes. 



By this plan the show flat-coated breed has come to the 

 extreme front for the first time in the history of the field 

 trials. Probably it will be interesting briefly to enumerate 

 the principal features of retriever trials. Nobody ought to 

 be able to do it better than the author, for he is the only 

 man who has seen them all. The first was a very modest 

 effort attached to the 1870 autumn shooting trials of pointers 

 and setters, held at Vaynol Park, which fine property the late 

 Mr. Assheton-Smith had just before inherited. The following 

 year, at the same trials, there were two stakes for these dogs. 

 The author hunted a puppy which was quite good on 

 wounded partridges, but the very worst possible retriever on a 

 wounded hare. The first thing he was set to do was to get 

 a wounded " squarnog," as a hare is called in Welsh. Strange 

 to say, on the fine rushy, damp fields of Vaynol, the expected 

 wild-goose chase came off, and the useless hare retriever came 

 back with the spoils of victory. A retriever, possibly belonging 

 to Mr. Lloyd Price, was entered at the same time by the late 

 Mr. Thomas Ellis of Bala, for the aged dog stake, and won 



