520 DOG-BREAKING. p 



may be tempted to lick the blood, and, finding it pala- 

 table, be led to maul the carcase. You see, therefore, 

 the judiciousness of employing every means in your 

 power to ensure his feeling anxious to deliver quickly, 

 and I know not what plan will answer better though it 

 sounds sadly unsentimental than to have some pieces 

 of hard boiled liver* at hand to bestow upon him the 

 moment he surrenders his game, until he is thoroughly 

 confirmed in an expeditious delivery. Never give him 

 a piece, however diligently he may have searched, un- 

 less he succeeds in bringing. When you leave off these 

 rewards do so gradually. The invariable bestowal of 

 such dainties during, at least, the retriever's first season, 

 will prevent his ever dropping a bird on hearing the 

 report of a gun as many do in order to search for 

 the later killed game. 



100. Should a young retriever evince any wish to as- 

 sist the cook by plucking out the feathers of a bird ; or 

 from natural vice or mismanagement before he came into 

 your possession,! show any predisposition to taste blood, 

 take about two feet (dependent upon the size of the 

 dog's head) of iron wire, say the one-eighth of an inch in 



* A drier and cleaner article than you may suppose, and which 

 can be carried not inconveniently in a Mackintosh, or oil-skin bag 

 a toilet sponge bag. 



f If a retriever has the opportunity, while prowling about, of gnaw- 

 ing hare or rabbit-skins thrown aside by a slovenly cook, it will 

 not be unnatural in him, when he is hungry, to wish to appropriate 

 to himself the hide, if not the interior, of the animals he is lifting. 



