
The Best Dog 
BY EDMOND WOODFORD 
Every sportsman of middle age has owned 
one dog that he believed to be the best dog in 
the world. Perhaps he was right. It may have 
been the best dog in the world—for him. That 
intimate sympathy may have been established 
between the biped and quadruped which alone 
insures companionship and camaraderie, and, if 
so, the partnership is sure to have been a happy 
one. It is not, however, of these happy unions 
these_dogs gave me the greatest satisfaction. I 
thought then, as I think now, that a good spaniel 
will put up one-third more of these birds, within 
range, than a pointer or a setter, though the 
shooting itself is harder. 
The lively, bustling spaniel will work out a 
thick belt of alder, or a matted sidehill, in a 
most thorough manner, and will pass under 
logs and through small openings that a larger 
dog would never tackle. Oftentimes the wood- 
cock gives out no scent. I know this, because 
I kept a wing-tipped one for some weeks and 

“DEACON,” A SUCCESSFUL BENCH AND FIELD POINTER 
Owned by W. R. Lyon, Piqua, Ohio 
that I would write, or that I had in mind when 
I chose the heading for this article, but rather 
of the best breed of dog for use in the field. 
Practically, the choice is limited to the 
____ pointer and the setter for all-around shooting 
and to the spaniel for brush or covert work. I 
think Ihave had as varied shooting and almost as 
much as most men of middle age, and yet I have 
not quite decided on ‘‘the best dog” even yet. 
___ Each breed has its good points and its bad ones, 
and yet they are all so attractive to a dog-lover 
_ that one finds it hard to make a selection... Much 
of my earlier shooting was had over very well- 
trained spaniels, in the thick brush of the East- 
ern States. On ruffed grouse and woodcock 

experimented with it. On placing it under a 
bush my dogs—fully up to the average in nose— 
would fail to acknowledge it on many occasions, 
though passing within a very few feet. This is 
where the spaniel gains his advantage. It takes 
a very close-hunting dog to find scattered wood- 
cock when the weather is dry and hot. This 
was forced to my attention some fifteen years 
ago in a rather emphatic way. I was hunting 
a large, open cover, as Eastern covers go, when 
I chanced to make out a woodcock, squatting 
as motionless as if carved in stone, under the 
upraised end of a log. My dog—one of old 
Sensation’s grandsons—passed within ten feet 
of the bird without winding it. 
