"The One" Dog and "The Others": A Study of Canine Character

by Frances E. Slaughter

And yet what good and faithful work many dogs will give to careless and even cruel owners! A very handsome, upstanding black and white setter, who belonged to a farmer of morose temper, was one of these. The dog was not properly fed, and in spite of his thick coat he excited the commiseration of some people, a part of whose property adjoined the land rented by the farmer. The members of this family were lovers of sport in all its forms, and they often saw the setter at work, and knew that he was particularly staunch on game. One day Prince was following his master about the farm on agricultural interests bent, when, as they passed some heathland, the dog lighted on a covey of partridges. He instantly became rigid, but knowing well that sport was not at the moment the point of interest in his master’s mind, he looked round to see if he was being observed. The master’s hand was raised, and Prince obediently dropped. Then the farmer hurried home to fetch his gun. At the end of between twenty and thirty minutes he was back, and found Prince still at his post. At a word, the dog was up, and his master secured a brace of birds. Another time when Prince had been lent to the son of the neighbouring landowner, the dog retained his position for full fifteen minutes before the gun came up. It is sad to think that such a dog should have had more than his share of blows and curses, and but little of the affection that would have made his life happy.

But if the same gentle restraint is about the young dog in the field that has hitherto attended his training, the response he will give to his owner’s wishes will be little short of marvellous. For the most striking point about the dog’s work in the field is that he carries it out without any physical gain to himself, beyond his enjoyment of the exercise it gives him and the delight the scent of the game affords. The only reward he looks for is one that appeals to his imagination and affection only. While he ranges the field for the hidden game he must have a clear conception in his mind of the results that will follow his successful point. It will bring to his master the pleasure for which he has come out. But here his own share in the work ceases, and it is another dog that will dash in and carry the trophy to his owner. It is well known that many dogs show such a clear appreciation of the respective duties of the various partners in the sport that they will refuse to do their share if the gun does not account for a satisfactory number of birds. Could anything say more plainly that if their own part of the work is well done they expect equal skill to be shown by their fellow workers?

A setter who showed such nice discrimination belonged to a man who was a firstrate shot. This man had the generosity to lend his dog not infrequently to friends, and it was when the dog was working for an indifferent shot that he showed his disapproval of work to which he was not accustomed. If his temporary master missed two birds running, the setter always turned away and made straight for home. In no case was he ever known to condone such a failure. One miss he would overlook, but two in succession he could not and did not tolerate.

No more cutting reproach can be given to any indifferent sportsman than the silent turning away of a well trained and intelligent dog from the sport in which his master is not taking his due share. And what in many cases is the immediate result of an action on the part of the dog that shows such an amazing appreciation of things as they are? The insult is felt, only to give point to the man’s natural exasperation at his own failure. The dog is not made to feel that his exercise of intelligence is understood, but that to please his master he must go on with his work. He is instead rated, or even beaten, for the desire he has shown to give it up, and what wonder if, feeling the injustice of the punishment that has followed his own good service, the dog turns sulky and refuses to try again. If the man were not so absorbed in his own determination to have sport, good, bad, or indifferent, as to have no thought to give to the dog’s point of view, he would pursue a juster course and one more likely to give him the result he desires.

The field work of the pointer is differentiated from that of his near relation, the foxhound, in every essential detail. True, he has the same excitement that is the hound’s great joy in the field of hunting up to his game. But even here he has to be taught to seek for his birds with head well in air, instead of keeping his sensitive nose on the ground. For this part of his duty, he has to work out the problem before him entirely without help from his fellows. Then as soon as he signals to his master by the customary point that game is at hand, nothing but a passing glimpse of the birds as they rise comes to reward his work. Instead of the run for a kill that brings the successful chase of the hound to a close, the pointer or setter has to remain content with the knowledge that the physical enjoyment of touching the game has fallen to the retriever, and that the trophy itself has been taken possession of by his master.

We have all heard of the long discussion that from the days of Colonel Thornton’s celebrated pointer Dash has been carried on respecting the infusion of foxhound blood into the pointer kennel. With this matter I have no concern, but I am reminded of a very curious instance of hound work that more nearly resembled the pointer style than that of the foxhound. Yet Druid, the hound in question, was one of pure foxhound blood on both sides. He was a son of Rufford Denmark, and many of his brothers and sisters are to be found in the Hound lists of the late Mr. Merthyr Guest, which lists I have had the privilege of studying. The dam of Druid was Woodbine, a daughter of Mr. Garth’s Wildfire, and she strained back to the wonderful hound Ruby (1864), the mother of the Blackmore Vale pack, that was dispersed on Mr. Guest’s resignation of the Mastership, in the year 1900. One who hunted with the Blackmore Vale for many years, and was one of the hardest riders of a hard riding field, says of Druid,[4] he “had a curious way of catching a scent. He would stand on his hind legs with his nose high in the air, and sometimes even jump from the ground in his eagerness to catch it.” The hound was, this writer adds, “a most reliable hound” in his work.

Another incident in the pointer or setter’s duty when he is working with other dogs demands as much intelligent comprehension as his point, and an equal amount of self-control. This is the “back” he is expected to give, immediately one of his companions is at the point. He knows that his fellow is in the enjoyment of the “grateful steam” that is one of the few lawful pleasures he can hope for from the day’s sport. Yet he may not move a step towards the spot where the pleasure lies. He must too give up his own anticipations of a similar joy, and wait while others are having the fun. Now, if we think of this for a moment from the dog’s point of view, we shall see what a high exercise of self-control he must bring to bear on this part of his duty.

This has always seemed to me one of the most surprising results of the effects of training on the higher mental powers of the dog that has ever been achieved. Of course we know that pointers and setters may be taught to retrieve, and a setter may do the work of both pointer and retriever, but here I am only speaking of the special tasks allotted to the former. And with such intelligent co-operation as he is expected to give, has not the dog a right to the considerate and gentle treatment that will alone encourage him to give of his best? I would plead with every sportsman that takes a gun in hand not to cast a slur on his own manhood by unworthy conduct to a faithful worker, to the exercise of whose skill his pleasure owes so much.

From the point of view of the thinker, a nice psychological problem presents itself, as to the powers of the dog’s mind that are brought into play during a day’s shooting. There is, first of all, an intelligent response to the training that has been given him, when he is left to carry out his work by himself. For though a faint whistle may from time to time come to carry some direction from his master, the exigencies of the shooting field demand that he should be left in the main to his own resources. But far above this in intellectual effort is the imagination that must be brought into play to give him the conception, he undoubtedly has, of the different parts that go to make up the whole of the day’s sport. If he did not realise the parts of the work he does not see, as well as those that are the result of his own exertions, it would be impossible for him to show resentment at the sport not being brought to a successful termination. The report rings out when the birds rise, whether the shot is to bring success or failure. In any further steps, the dog has no share, but the mental picture that is imaged on his brain must not be marred, or he will take the very means to mark his sense of the disturbance that a human might do if he were put into the position of the dog.

A very extraordinary instance of intelligent co-operation with the work of the guns is told me by one who has had a life-long experience in the breeding and training of shooting dogs. In the course of a day’s grouse shooting in Caithness, two black pointers were out and working in their usual good style. But one bird could not be found. The keeper was at last joined by the guns in his search, but no efforts could discover the bird the dogs told them was there. When the search was given up in despair, the keeper noticed that only one of his dogs went to his work. The other went back and sitting down regarded her master anxiously. The man saw her take her point and go up to dead. Then she disappeared from view, but instantly reappearing, she drew herself up to her full height with the dead bird in her mouth. Holding it for a moment for her master to see, she then dropped it and sat down beside it. Hurrying up, the keeper found that the bird had crept into a narrow hole in the ground, where the efforts of all the party had been unable to find it.