282 The Sporting Dog 



behind the house would often be thirty or forty 

 dogs, ahnost every one the possessor of a de- 

 spised vice. There were bolters, blinkers, and bird 

 eaters ; there were the gun-shy, the jealous, and the 

 savage. However, most of them belonged to men 

 who had money to spend ; and the director of this 

 odd reform school had a cool philosophy of life 

 for himself, as well as that imperturbable patience 

 which conquered the dog rascals. He did his 

 work well and charged well. It cost him little 

 to keep the dogs and every year he laid away in 

 bank a useful addition to his farm revenues. 



When I woke at six o'clock in the morning it 

 was to hear a repetition of decisive commands 

 ringing out in the quiet dawn. " Halt ! " " Go 

 on ! " " Pick it up ! " " Come in ! " I found the 

 professor at work on a pupil in an enclosure forty 

 feet square, wired off as a training yard. The dog 

 was a two-year-old pointer, never before handled. 

 A check-cord kept him under control. The lesson 

 was in retrieving. 



" I'll tell you the biggest secret of training," said 

 the tutor as he paused for a few minutes. " Once 

 make a dog stop to order without question, and 

 you've got him. To teach anything else comes 

 easy; because, in the first place, you can make 

 him see what you want, and then you have him 

 where he is already admitting your power instead 

 of rollicking off on business of his own. I find 



