402 
FOREST AND STREAM 
SEPTEMBER, 1917 
HOW TO MAKE A MEAT DOG 
THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF SIMPLE LESSONS IN DOG TRAINING THAT WILL ENABLE 
THE EVERYDAY SPORTSMAN TO DEVELOP A USEFUL ASSISTANT IN FIELD AND COVERT 
T HE charm and success of field sports 
depends so directly upon the work of 
the intelligent and well behaved bird 
dog that it is easy to understand the atten¬ 
tion that has for many years been devoted 
to the breeding and training of setters and 
pointers. In the last half century a series 
of competitions known as field trials have 
enjoyed an extraordinary vogue both here 
and abroad and have markedly influenced 
the breeding of bird dogs. These trials un¬ 
doubtedly have been of some benefit, but 
it cannot be well denied that they have ren¬ 
dered some strains of bird dog well nigh 
useless for the everyday sportsman who, 
while admiring style and dash and other 
highly developed qualities, is more keenly 
interested in the bird dog which will locate 
the elusive snipe, penetrate the coverts of 
the woodcock, search the fields for cheer¬ 
ful Bob White and serve as a useful as¬ 
sistant to the gun. 
We purpose to write of the sportsman’s 
dog, sometimes termed by professional 
handlers the “meat dog,’’ as distingushed 
from the field trial dog which occupies so 
much space in the sporting magazine. Just 
when and where the term meat dog orig¬ 
inated we are unable to say but we do 
know that it has occupied a prominent po¬ 
sition in the lexicon of field trial handlers 
ever since a man named Tom Pace and a 
dog named Prince Whitestone won the 
championship at Grand Junction, Tenn. 
Tom Pace was a rangy built man who 
lived in the Cumberland mountains. He 
mined coal for a living and went quail 
hunting for recreation, or to be more ex¬ 
act, mined coal so that he could go bird 
hunting. His own review of the situation 
was that he was “a plum fool over bird 
dogs and bird huntin’ and when he wasn’t 
bird huntin’ he was readin’ about bird dogs 
and dog races.” Prince was his favorite 
dog, which he had raised from a pup and 
trained and Prince had “just naturally 
cleaned up every dog that he had met in 
the field.” The zest of local conquests had 
dulled upon Tom Pace but the sporting 
magazines continually whetted his appetite 
for other fields to conquer; so one day Mr. 
Pace bought a mackintosh coat, whistled to 
Old Prince, laid in a supply of mountain 
grown tobacco, boarded the accommodation 
train, and the next evening was working 
edgewise into the biggest dog talk that he 
had ever heard, for he was at a big field 
trial meeting over in Illinois, hobnobbing 
with millionaires, smoking cigars with 
bandages, and making some headway into 
the exclusive circle of professional han¬ 
dlers. It may be said that professional 
handlers at a field trial develop tempera¬ 
mental qualities that register from haughty 
reserve to sympathetic toleration, depend¬ 
ing largely upon the positions that their 
dogs occupy in the scale of competitions. 
They were the men, however, that Mr. 
Pace really looked up to, for he had read 
columns about them in the paper. Mean- 
By PIOUS JEEMS 
while, old Prince slept peacefully in one 
corner of the room. 
There was no temperament about Tom 
Pace and his dog Prince; in fact we doubt 
if either would have known what tempera¬ 
ment was outside of the feed lot. The fact 
that they were not thought worthy of con¬ 
sideration in what the morrow’s racing 
might bring forth was no fault of his, for 
he announced he was over there to win 
the trials or find out if there was a dog in 
the world that could beat old Prince and 
personally he did not believe that there 
was. 
That night Old Prince shared his master’s 
room. In the morning he breakfasted on 
what was left of ham and eggs, grits and 
a double order of wheat cakes, and instead 
of riding out to the grounds wrapped in a 
blanket, in a special constructed dog wagon, 
he simply trotted alongside the buggy that 
the mountaineer had negotiated for with 
the liveryman the night before. 
There is no necessity of going into the 
details of that field trial day other than 
to say that there never was a sadder bunch 
of handlers than those that drifted into the 
hotel dining rooms that evening. The 
mountain dog had cleaned them so clean 
that there wasn’t a good kick in the outfit. 
Tom Pace and Prince and the prize money 
took the night train for the hills, and it 
was not until after the little red lights in 
the rear of the train had glimmered down 
the tracks and faded away into the dark¬ 
ness that there was a revival of spirits. 
The next morning there was .some talk 
about a “fluke race,” “fields too small,” 
“conditions not right and it could not have 
been done at Grand Junction.” 
The following January the first man to 
greet the handlers when they untrained at 
Grand Junction, Tenn., was Tom Pace, old 
Prince and the mackintosh coat, and to 
make a short story of a long week, the old 
dog beat them again on the historic field 
where Championship races have been won 
and lost for nearly half a century. He out- 
birded Champion Jessie Rodfields, Count 
Gladstone, the greatest bird dog of his day, 
and on the breakways looked back at La¬ 
nark Lad, the fastest dog of the season. 
He won the championship cup and when 
the time came for him to go home some 
one congratulated Tom Pace on having 
such a magnificent field trial dog. He re¬ 
adjusted his tobacco, took another hitch at 
the mackintosh and replied, “Mister, you 
have made a mistake. I can’t stay here any 
longer because my wife has written that 
the children are crying for Old Prince, but 
he ain’t no field trial dog. He is a meat 
dog.” The definition was promptly adopted. 
Prince Whitestone was a meat dog. 
Handlers to-day refer to him as a meat 
dog, but he beat all the best field trial dogs 
of the day, as they had never been beaten 
before. 
There have been many attempts made to 
tell the difference between a class field trial 
dog and a meat dog. One of the clearest 
definitions is that a class dog hurries on 
into the next field to find birds while the 
meat dog finds those nearest to him. This 
also explains why so' many sportsmen 
prefer meat dogs to field trial dogs. At 
this time it may just as well be said that a 
meat dog can be just as well bred, just 
as good to look at in action or in repose, 
and just as handsome and stylish on point 
as a field trial dog. It is possible also to get 
a meat dog out of the same litter of pup¬ 
pies that produces a field trial dog, for 
bringing up, education and experience are 
the principal differences between the two. 
It is written down in the books that a 
dog is guided by instinct, that he does not 
possess reasoning power. Never was there 
greater fallacy. It is one of those old 
errors that one generation hands down and 
another generation accepts. The dog is an 
animal with a high degree of reasoning 
powers, so high it is difficult to place 
boundaries upon the possibilities of its in¬ 
telligence, and it is their remarkable ca¬ 
pacity for appreciating and combining facts 
that enables them in a few short years to 
acquire a knowledge of the habits and na¬ 
ture of game sufficient to outwit the cun- 
ningest bird by superior tactics. 
The average bird dog, either pointer or 
setter, with a fair amount of experience 
soon learns to follow a trail till the bird 
flushes or lies to point; but it requires a 
higher order of intellect to prompt the dog 
