312 ENERGY OF IRISH DOGS. [OH. xviu. 



them to train their dogs more quickly, and sufficiently 

 well to ensure an early sale. This is their object, and 

 they succeed. My object is that you shall establish 

 ultimately great perseverance and a fine range in your 

 young dog, let birds be ever so scarce. If you show him 

 too many at first, he will subsequently become easily 

 dispirited whenever he fails in getting a point. 



It is the general paucity of game in Ireland (snipe and woodcock 

 excepted) that makes dogs trained in that country show so much 

 untiring energy and indomitable zeal when hunted on our side of 

 the Channel. But the slight wiry Irish red setter (whom it is so 

 difficult to see on the moor from his colour), is naturally a dog 

 of great pace and endurance. There is, however, a much heavier 

 sort. 



566. Many dogs, solely from want of good condition, greatly 

 disappoint their masters at the beginning of the season. You could 

 not expect your hunter to undergo a hard day's work without a 

 previous course of tolerably severe exercise ; and why expect it of 

 your dog ? A couple of hours' quiet exercise in the cool of the 

 morning or evening will not harden his feet, and get him into the 

 wind and condition requisite for the performance you may desire of 

 him some broiling day in the middle of August or early in September. 

 If you do not like to disturb your game, and have no convenient 

 country to hunt over, why should you not give him some gallops 

 before the beginning of the shooting-season, when you are mounted 

 on your trotting hackney ? Think how greyhounds are by degrees 

 brought into wind and hard meat before coursing commences. 

 Such work on the road will greatly benefit his feet,* particularly if, 

 on his return home in wet weather, they are bathed with a strong 

 solution of salt and water. When the ground is hard and dry. they 

 should be washed with warm water and soap, both to soothe them 



* Claws of dogs kept on boarded and would rub against the bars 



floors, or not exercised, occa- when she was approached by 



sionally become so long, that visitors to invite their caresses ; 



unless they are filed or pared but it was quite distressing to see 



down, they cause lameness. In her raising each leg alternately, 



the menagerie at the Cape of Good really to ease it of her weight, but 



Hope I saw a fine tigress, the apparently as if soliciting relief, 



claws of whose fore-feet had grown The blessings of chloroform were 



so far beyond her power of sheath- then unknown. No tiger while 



ing that they had penetrated deep under its drowsy influence had 



into the flesh, and it was under ever had an injured limb ampu- 



consideration how to secure her tated, as was once successfully 



so that the operator should incur managed at the Surrey Zoological 



no risk while sawing off the ends. Gardens. 

 She was very tame and sociable, 



