CHAPTER VIII 
TRAINING A FieLD Doc 
=INNUMERABLE are the books on the subject of training 
| dogs for shooting, yet the general principles are the same that 
were told more than three hundred years ago. Changes 
in the method of capture have called for changes in the 
duties of the dogs used for finding the game, but the ground 
plan is the same as it was probably four hundred years ago, and since then 
it is only additional stories of education on the old foundation. The subject 
is not a complex one by any means and no one method is the Simon-pure to 
the exclusion of all others. Like the adding of a column of figures, one 
man does it from top to foot and another goes up the column. It is not 
the method, but the care exercised in applying the method, which insures 
in each case the correctness of the total. So also in the training of a dog, 
each of a dozen books on the subject varies slightly from the others, but all 
arrive at the same.end of obedience inculcated and certain things ac- 
complished. 
The education of a child is not attained in a year or two, nor do we 
expect a neglected child to accomplish solely on account of his age what 
another gradually educated one can do. We must approach the subject 
of dog training rationally and with the thorough understanding that while 
compared with many animals the dog is exceedingly intelligent, he is yet an 
exceedingly ignorant one when compared with the human family. He is 
an animal you cannot argue with, nor is it any use telling him why he must 
not do a certain thing or why he must do something in a certain way. 
You have to make him do the things required of him in the way desired 
and check him when he goes wrong til! the one way becomes habit, and he 
knows he will be punished if he does anything else. 
In these days when well-bred dogs are so exceedingly cheap, it is well 
to spend a little money in getting the right sort of dog to train. A great 
many people imagine that because a dog has a pretty good pedigree he must 
necessarily prove a good field dog. It is the same in dogs as with us, and 
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