68 BIT FOR BLOOD-SUCKER. [CH. iv. 



he may be tempted to lick the blood, and, finding it 

 palatable, be led to maul the carcase. You see, there- 

 fore, 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, unless he succeed 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. 



117. Should a young retriever evince any wish to 

 assist 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 diameter, sufficiently flexible for you, but not 

 for him, to bend. Shape this much into the form of the 

 letter U, supposing the extremities to be joined by a 

 straight line. Place the straight part in the dog's 

 mouth, and passing the other over his head and ears, 

 retain it in position by a light throat lash passed 

 through a turn in the wire, as here roughly repre- 



* A drier and cleaner article of gnawing hare or rabbit-skins 



than you may suppose, and which thrown aside by a slovenly cook, 



can be carried not inconveniently it will not be unnatural in him, 



in a Mackintosh, or oil-skin bag, when he is hungry, to wish to 



a toilet sponge bag. appropriate to himself the hide, 



t If a retriever has the op- if not the interior of the animals 



portunity, while prowling about, he is lifting. 



