FINISHING TOUCHES 125 
days afield with a dog are limited to the com¬ 
paratively few days of open season, little 
realize what you are missing. Breaking 
your own bird dog, if spread out over about 
eight months out of the twelve, as it should 
be, will give you just a world of wonderful 
pleasure—and in the end a shooting dog 
that will please you better and be the source 
of more pride than you will ever experience 
with a dog broken for you by some outside 
trainer. And if you don’t keep your good 
dog tuned up, don’t blame him if he goes 
stale. 
I recommend the long, slow development, 
because I do not believe you can or should 
try to crowd a dog’s schooling into a few 
short weeks—any more than you would the 
education of a child. We are prone to ex¬ 
pect too much of a dog and are seldom pre¬ 
pared to make proper allowances. I have 
found that the less people know about dogs 
the more apt they are to fail in their appre¬ 
ciation of limitations. Consequently such 
people never receive from a dog anything 
approaching his full capacity for service. 
These splendid creatures are wonderful 
