CH. i.] KEQUISITES IN AN INSTRUCTOR. 3 



content yourself with humbler qualifications. Be it so. 

 I can only condole with you, for in your case this may 

 be partly true ; mind I only say partly true. But how 

 a man of property, who keeps a regular gamekeeper, 

 can be satisfied with the disorderly, disobedient troop, 

 to which he often shoots, I cannot understand. Where 

 the gamekeeper is permitted to accompany his master 

 in the field, and hunt the dogs himself, there can be no 

 valid excuse for the deficiency in their education. The 

 deficiency must arise either from the incapacity, or from 

 the idleness of the keeper. 



5. Unlike most other arts, dog-breaking does not 

 require much experience ; but such a knowledge of dogs, 

 as will enable you to discriminate between their dif- 

 ferent tempers and dispositions (I had almost said cha- 

 racters) and they vary greatly is very advantageous. 

 Some require constant encouragement ; some you must 

 never beat ; whilst, to gain the required ascendancy over 

 others, the whip must be occasionally employed. Nor 

 is it necessary that the instructor should be a very good 

 shot ; which probably is a more fortunate circumstance 

 for me than for you. It should even be received as 

 a principle that birds ought to be now and then missed 

 to young dogs, lest some day, if your nerves happen to 

 be out of order, or a cockney companion be harmlessly 

 blazing away, your dog take it into his head and heels 

 to run home in disgust, as I have seen a bitch, called 

 Countess, do more than once, in Haddingtonshire. 



6. The chief requisites in a breaker are : Firstly, 

 command of temper, that he may never be betrayed into 

 giving one unnecessary blow, for, with dogs as with 

 horses, no work is so well done as that which is done 

 cheerfully ; secondly, consistency, that in the exhilara- 

 tion of his spirits, or in his eagerness to secure a bird, 



B 2 



