Retriever's Usefulness
The gamekeeper's retriever will learn to discover the whereabouts of every hedgehog in a ditch. A clever dog will find in a few hours as many hedgehogs as a week of trapping will secure—miles of hedges may be cleared in a day in the summer. The dog must be kept under absolute control, lest he disturb sitting birds, thereby, perhaps, doing as much damage as might the hedgehogs. Almost any dog may be trained to a particular work, such as playing the bloodhound's part, and following the trail of men, whether friends or strangers—even terriers may become useful trackers. The night-dogs used by gamekeepers—crosses between mastiffs and bulldogs—will follow poachers through the woods during the blackest hours of night.
A retriever is wonderfully useful for many purposes besides recovering game. A dog, which had never seen a cricket ball, was with us when we chanced to be crossing a field, at dusk, where a ball had been lost in thick cow-parsley in the shade of trees. The cricketers appealed for our help; we cleared the course, and set on the dog. She took the wind, trotted along, turned suddenly, ran straight for a score of yards, and came back, the lost ball in her mouth. Perhaps she worked it out in her own mind that as no shot had been fired there was no game to follow, and the ball-scent must therefore be the one she was required to track. No doubt she would have left the line of the ball if the scent of anything in the shape of dead game had reached her sensitive nose.
