ADVICE TO YOUNG COURSERS. 181 



submitted to such a series of losses as, in all probability, to 

 disgust him with the sport, he has no chance of finding out the 

 right way from the wrong. In training, for instance, nothing but 

 experience can direct the exact amount of work which each 

 particular dog will bear ; but it is easy to direct the average 

 quantity, to be regulated according to the age and constitution 

 of the individual. The same holds good with respect to food and 

 the number of courses which puppies should have before they 

 appear in public. In this last point so much depends upon the 

 breed and rearing, that an experienced person alone can say when 

 a puppy is fit to meet the Judge's eye. But the whole subject is 

 now so enveloped in mystery, so much is thought to be done by 

 the trainer which no man can do, that the novice is frightened 

 from attempting the task, and, if determined to commence as a 

 public courser, he trusts entirely to some dog-man, who probably 

 knows as little of the proper management of the greyhound as the 

 horsekeeper of a wayside public-house does of the management of 

 a race-horse. Hence the miserable failures which are so often 

 made. Greyhounds are brought to the slips as fat as bullocks, or 

 else like living skeletons, or, perhaps, in condition fit to run for a 

 man's life, but having had no experience, they either lose their 

 course by running wide, or do not kill their hare when they have 

 the power to do so. It is my object, therefore, to enable any 

 man who understands the management of dogs generally, or even 

 his own species (since the points of similarity in constitution 

 between man and his companion, the dog, are so great as to make 

 it easy to do the one if the other has been mastered), to undertake 



