288 BREAKING AND ENTERING. 
every shooting season. To make the utmost of any dog requires 
great experience and tact, and therefore the ordinary sportsman, 
however ardent he may be, can scarcely expect his dogs to attain 
this amount of perfection; but by attending to the following 
instructions, which will be given in plain language, he may fairly 
hope to turn out a brace of dogs far above the average of those 
belonging to his neighbours. One advantage he will assuredly 
have when he begins the actual war against the birds in September, 
namely, that his dogs will cheerfully work for him, and will be 
obedient to his orders; but, at the same time, he must not expect 
that they will behave as well then as they did when he considered 
their education complete in the previous April or May. No one 
who values “the bag” above the performance of his dogs will take 
a young pointer into the field at all till he has been shot over for 
some time by a man who makes it his business to break dogs, 
and who is not himself over-excited by the sport. It is aston- 
ishing what a difference is seen in the behaviour of the young 
dog when he begins to see game falling to the gun. He may 
go out with all the steadiness which he had acquired by two 
months’ drilling in the spring, but more frequently he will have 
forgotten all about it, unless he is well hunted in the week 
previous to the opening of the campaign. But no sooner has 
he found his birds or backed his fellow-pointer, and this good 
behaviour has been followed by the report of the gun, heard 
now almost for the first time, and by the fall of a bird or two 
within a short distance, than he becomes wild with excitement, 
and, trying to rival the gun in destructiveness, he runs into 
his birde, or plays some other trick almost equally worthy of 
punishment. For this there is no remedy but patience and 
plenty of hard work, as we shall presently find; and I only 
mention it here in order that my readers may not undertake 
the task without knowing all its disagreeables as well as the 
advantages attending upon it. 
Supposing, therefore, that a gentleman has determined to break 
a brace of pointers for his own use, without assistance from a 
keeper, let us now consider how he should set about it. 
In the first place, let him procure his puppies of a breed in 
which he can have confidence. He will do well to secure a brace 
