Pointing and backing may or may not come naturally when the youngster finds that he cannot catch his birds after a few tries, but they are easily encouraged to come sooner by the use of the voice on the hand-broken pupil, or by the use of the check cord. It is, however, just as well to let a puppy chase the birds until he naturally points them. This is education of the best kind in “locating” the game, which implies the quick recognition of the difference between body and foot scents of birds. In the same way it is a good plan to let a puppy run in a few times to a pointing dog to flush and chase his game. This is not doing wrong, for up to this stage the dog will have received no intimation that chasing game and flushing it are wrong, except that hereditary instinct may prompt the puppy to point and also to back.
It is not well to insist upon instant dropping to wing, until a young dog has learnt how to point steadily and to draw up boldly to the game at the side of his breaker. This becomes a nerve-trying task if a sudden rush of wings is also associated with orders to “drop,” and it is well to confirm the natural attitude on point, which will generally be beautiful, before running a risk of the young dog learning to confuse the point with the order to drop to wing.
The rush in, on the rise of game, is better first checked by the hand upon the collar, or on the cord, if one is used. There is no use in calling “To-ho” to a pointing dog, or in using any words of caution. A broken dog requires no caution, and a partly broken or unbroken one is to be taught to rely upon his nose, and not on the breaker’s voice, for his knowledge of when he should point. If the breaker knows best, where is the use of the dog? If the latter points or draws and then moves on, let him do it; it is educational, and one mistake may prevent a hundred; but if you “to-ho” a false point you are making a bad dog by it, and if you “to-ho” when there is game you are teaching the dog that you are going to tell him when to point, and that you certainly cannot judge of by the dog’s manner if he does not know himself.
One of the principal things to teach is quartering, and this is often the natural outcome of walking directly up wind with your pupil. It is generally instinctive to the well-bred dog to cross the wind to and fro. But this natural instinct will be unhinged by any change of direction, so that a breaker who started his puppy in different and changing methods, in regard to the wind, would find him ranging, but not quartering, and would observe the puppy at the end of a cast as likely to turn down wind as up. For this reason, until a confirmed range has been established by walking into the wind, with the puppy beating from side to side of his breaker, no other method of beating a field should be attempted. Even with the precaution of always walking into the wind, the puppy is not unlikely to turn down wind at one end or the other of his cast. That is a bad fault in itself, and bespeaks flighty disposition, and a bad nose besides. There is always scent of kinds, we may suppose, up wind of the puppy, which ought to turn his investigating nose into the wind instead of the other way, as so often happens. The breaker may be troubled to correct this habit, but, as it is partly owing to the dog’s love of his breaker that he forgets the game and turns back, it can be cured by making the puppy more fond of finding game, and by tiring him, until he has to think of the nearest way. But as for other reasons tiring a puppy in the breaking season is bad, when no game is being shot, the trouble can be overcome by the breaker walking near the hedge on the side of the field the pupil turns the wrong way, and then, by the teacher making haste as the puppy approaches that side, he will be automatically turned the right way. Strangely, most puppies turn wrong at one end and not at the other. If they turn wrong at both ends, they are probably hopeless fools that are not worth breaking.
A want of good “backing” may be very common from many different causes. It generally comes from an absence of interest in the point of another dog, and consequently is more noticed in spring breaking than in autumn shooting. If dogs are left to themselves in autumn, they will nearly always back, or run in and take another’s point. The latter is objectionable, and may cause flushing by either dog, or by both. But it shows interest in the point, and that is what the breaker has to work upon. In the spring breaking not infrequently a puppy will go half a mile round in order to avoid being obliged to see and back a point. That is because nothing of excitement ever comes of a back before the shooting season, and in order to make a perfect backer of a dog of this character (one that is obviously plucky and no fool) he must have his interest created in the other’s point. This is very easy to accomplish. One of the chief causes of bad backing is, naturally, false pointing. Like the man who is always crying “Wolf!” the imaginative dog is not believed by his fellows, and when pointing dogs are made to back up false points they perform the operation as an act of unwilling obedience, and do not assume those attitudes that are so pleasing in the willing dog. It is therefore quite impossible to have good backing in a brace of dogs, if one, or both, false point. But there is a way in which a useless false pointer (and they all are useless) can be made to give a good lesson in backing and one not easily forgotten, that should not be often, if at all, repeated. It is a trick on the dog to be educated, and as such must not be found out, otherwise its virtue will be gone.
The plan is to get a wing-clipped partridge and to fasten to its wing a leather strap, and to this latter a string of 20 yards length with a peg at its end, around which the string can be wound. All together can be put into a cartridge bag, for choice one of waterproofed canvas, because it is not certain whether, in any other sort, the dog will discover what is being carried on the shoulder of his trainer, and it is important he should not discover. Then it is necessary to hunt the prospective backer with the false pointer. The latter will soon get a point, which the puppy will ignore or investigate. In either case, wait until the pupil has done the field and comes back; he will then again see the false point, and before he gets down wind of it he must be dropped by hand. He is by this time “cock sure” his companion is pointing nothing; but in his absence you have unrolled the string from your partridge and put the peg in the ground at a place up wind of the pointing dog, but down wind of the spot where you intend to drop the pupil. You have taken the partridge out of its bag, and, having placed its head under its wing, you have given it two or three swings round, so as to make it giddy. Then you have placed it on the ground lying on that wing under which is its head, and there you have left it. It will lie quite still for a quarter of an hour, if need be. Having gone back to the peg, which must be between the partridge and your young dog for obvious reasons, you give the string a snatch, and up flutters the partridge in full view. The bird will make a racket when he finds himself caught, and will flutter a good deal. When you are quite sure your dog will not join in the chase, you will make as much fuss about catching the bird as possible. You will not let the puppy see what you do when you return the bird to the bag, and you will not let the young dog go down wind of the spot on which the partridge has been fluttering. A clever dog will detect what has happened if you do either, and will take no interest afterwards if it should be necessary to repeat the lesson. After this, go straight home with the dogs in couples, and next day have out for the young one a better companion, that will not false point. It is twenty to one that the first point made in the sight of the youngster will be backed with all the vivacity of a point. In this way you will discover that one good lesson, properly given with no mistake in it, will do more than a year’s drudgery in stopping, scolding, and whipping, when the pupil ought to back.
There are many pointers and setters that will back naturally, but this trait almost implies that they have not as much capacity for finding game as the neighbours that they back up in their points. Indeed, the better the dog is naturally, the greater is the difficulty in persuading him to a spirit of diffidence. For these very good animals the plan has been found the most useful by the author, and a triumph of breaking is to make a perfect backer of a dog so good that he rarely sees a point, because he finds nine-tenths of the game himself. In order to do it, there is a necessity for reducing his own estimation of himself, and luckily this can be done in the manner related without in the smallest degree reducing the finding powers and ranging energy of the most superior dogs.
The Uses of Field Trials for Pointers and Setters
Once in a decade it is possible to see at a field trial a bit of work so good that it is safe to say the doer of it will win the stake—it is safe, although when the opinion is formed the rest of the entries have not been seen at work. It would not be safe to say so when acting as judge, or to act upon any such notion. But the writer has ventured the opinion on several occasions when others have been judging, and has always been right. The occasions arise only in those rare circumstances when the scent is as good as can be, and the dog does things that only the very best can do in the most favourable circumstances.
Generally it is unsafe to form any opinions except by comparing the work of one dog with that of another at the same time and place. That is what field trials enable; and it does not follow that when only moderate work is done at them that the doers are only ordinary. Field trials are often held in conditions of scent and weather when the wise shooter would go home. The competitors at these meetings are always picked dogs at home, and have generally beaten “good trial horses” before they show in public. But when shooters go to a trial and unfavourably compare what they see there to experience at home, they may be right, but whenever this comparison has given them confidence enough to enter dogs the latter have invariably been disgraced, unless they happened to be of field trial winning blood. This really answers the question as to what use these institutions are.