90 BREAKING A BIRD DOG 
what now caused her unsteadiness. It was 
all brought about on that last day of pheas¬ 
ant shooting. We had encouraged her to 
start chasing wounded birds so quickly that 
it had spoiled her steadiness. A pheasant 
is so often brought out of the air and yet 
not stopped dead that she got to looking 
for all birds to start running the minute 
they hit the ground—and her line of thought 
was that the sooner she got started after 
them, the better. So far as the pheasants 
were concerned, it didn’t matter so much, 
but it certainly was the wrong way to handle 
quail. In fact, I hadn’t even noticed it on 
the pheasants and was rather surprised 
when I took her back on quail and saw her 
unsteadiness to shot and wing. 
Now the way that is often the best to 
steady dogs down in this respect, is to put 
a check cord on them, and when they come 
to a point let them chase—and throw them¬ 
selves when they reach the end of the cord. 
Once or twice of this will usually accom¬ 
plish the desired result. A third lesson is 
but seldom required. As I have already ex¬ 
plained, however, it was impossible to use a 
