The better to further both designs, the buyer should have some regard for make and shape, and a minor regard for size. The dog-show ideals will not assist much. The principal wants of a working dog, to enable him to go on long, and day after day, are good shoulders. The nearer the tops are together the better—indeed, in imitation of the shape of a good hunter’s withers (that is, narrowing as they approach the top of the back). Powerful muscles in the hind legs, especially in the second thighs, big hocks set low down and well bent stifle joints, but not necessarily well bent hock joints, are all essentials, but only in proportion to the weight to be moved. Big fore legs below the knee and loins the same width from end to end—that is, with no dip horizontally or vertically in the middle—is part of the formation essential to stamina. But, after all, the only point wanted is proportion. With true balance the lighter a dog weighs the better, and yet the bigger he is the better too. This is only saying that the lighter and stronger he is for his size the better.
If it is impossible to see dogs out before auction days arrive, the safest way is to pick out some owner who sells with a good description, and who is good for powder and shot in the event of a mistake being made. Then the buyer has what amounts to a guarantee, and one that has often been acted upon. But unless the purchase is of well seasoned dogs, that have been the chief helps to some well-known sportsmen, it is always safest to go exclusively for field trial blood.
The chances are that young dogs of this blood will be far better than their owners know, and will come on in a surprising manner after a little shooting over, whereas coarse-bred dogs, that have been shot over a season, will be going back, and in most cases will have probably learnt some bad habits.
Nobody can decide for another how many dogs will do. The men differ even more than the dogs. Alternate instead of consecutive days on the moors will mean half the dogs necessary for every day upon the “hull.” In the same way the number may be decreased again by half if the shooting does not start until noon, and a long hour is taken for lunch, and the shooter is back at the lodge by 6 p.m.
Other men will begin shooting at 9 a.m., and will stop work at 6.30 or 7 p.m., which more than doubles the hours. Then the dogs will differ. The average perhaps will not now do more than two hours’ fast work during the day. Nothing is much more distressing in sport than a tired man trusting to a weary dog. That kind of thing is not what one pays big grouse rents for, and nothing less than fast work is likely to satisfy in these days.
No shooter of economic mind in regard to canine assistance does well to permit couples to be used on shooting days. They take half a day’s work out of some dogs, and a good deal out of all. Pointers and setters ought to be taught to walk at heel without couples, and are all the better for being sent in a cart to the fixture. Every ounce of energy should be conserved, as with a Derby horse. If dogs are really broken, they cannot be too fresh. Sometimes they are more fond of galloping than finding game, and then the best thing to do is still to start them fresh, but to run them until they are tired. This soon makes them glad of an excuse to find game. On the other hand, some are too fond of pointing, and will follow up any faint scent, leaving ground and birds right and left behind them, because they are too lazy to quarter. They are not nice dogs, but they are best worked very fresh and only for short spurts.
The author has often been asked what is the best way to treat a dog that false points and draws right into the wind as if he had found game, when he only thinks he may have done so. Probably the best way is to walk past him with a good retriever at heel, one on which reliance can be placed to show whether there is game in front or not. This saves you from the necessity of recognising a false point, either by drawing on the dog or calling him off. In either case your notice would do harm, whereas if you take not the smallest notice of such points the dog will soon learn to rely upon himself, if he has any courage at all.
There is, of course, a great demand for field trial breakers. Good men of this sort always get good posts, but sportsmen who have keepers whom they would like to see better handlers of dogs of any kind, would generally gain their ends by sending their men first to look on at field trials, then buying some six-weeks-old puppies of a good sort, in order to let their breakers compete occasionally at these events. It teaches keepers to view dogs in quite a different way, and they cost no more to keep as highly broken than as slovenly unbroken animals.
THE POINTER
In his beautiful monograph of the pointer, Mr. W. Arkwright, of Sutton Scarsdale, has given to us material and research which settles many things, and enables us to make up our minds with sufficient certainty for our own satisfaction upon many more. That is to say, any of us who take the trouble to refer to Mr. Arkwright’s pages will be able to form a judgment for ourselves upon the origin of the breed, as well as upon the tendency of breeders, for the last century. The author does not propose to quote, as he would like to, from those pages. The pointer is only one small item in a general book on shooting, and this is what the author is bidden to write by his publisher.