"If you own but one dog, by all means take all the trouble you can to perfect him in this business; and for this purpose you should choose your whelp from a strain that retrieves naturally.
"If you work three or four Spaniels together, unless they are thoroughly broken, they all want to retrieve, and it is often the cause of much trouble. Nothing looks worse than to see several dogs all tugging at one bird, except, perhaps, the bird itself afterwards. If your dogs are sufficiently broken and under command, and will drop to shot or come to heel, and you can direct either one of them to find the wounded game, while the others remain down or at heel, you can let them take it in turn which shall be allowed the pleasure and honour of recovering the wounded; but how rarely one sees Spaniels so well under command as this. In the case of a team of Spaniels, I think it better that they should not be allowed to retrieve, and this duty is better confined to a regular retriever.
"It is a good plan with young Spaniels to walk round a covert towards evening, when pheasants are out at feed in the stubbles, having an attendant with you to prevent them getting into covert, and walk in a zigzag way about the stubbles; you can generally give them plenty of practice in this way, and enter them well to the scent of winged game. If your puppies do not readily return to your whistle, but show a disposition to go on, turn your back upon them and go the other way, which will generally have the desired effect—and a rate or a crack of the whip from your attendant will greatly aid it. If a puppy is too fast, put up a fore-leg in his collar, or tie a strap tightly round one hind-leg just above the hock; but neither of these must remain long without changing, or you will produce swelling and inflammation. Apart from the pleasure and satisfaction there is in shooting to dogs of your own breaking, there is this advantage that they learn to understand your ways, and to know thoroughly your every look and motion, while you at the same time perfectly understand them.
"In selecting young Spaniels to break, if you do not breed your own, be most particular in getting them from a good working strain, of a sort that a friend of mine designates as 'savage for work.'
"To work Spaniels in thick, large woods, you should always go with them to work them, or send someone they are accustomed to work with, or they will become wild or slack."
SECTION B
Hounds