565. I hope that by this time we too well understand each other for you now to wonder why I think that you should not commence hunting your young dog where game is abundant. Professional breakers prefer such ground, because, from getting plenty of points, it enables them to train their dogs more quickly, and sufficiently well to ensure an early sale. This is their object, and they succeed. My object is that you shall establish ultimately great perseverance and a fine range in your young dog, let birds be ever so scarce. If you show him too many at first, he will subsequently become easily dispirited whenever he fails in getting a point.
ENERGY OF IRISH DOGS.
It is the general paucity of game in Ireland (snipe and woodcock excepted) that makes dogs trained in that country show so much untiring energy and indomitable zeal when hunted on our side of the Channel. But the slight wiry Irish red setter (whom it is so difficult to see on the moor from his colour), is naturally a dog of great pace and endurance. There is, however, a much heavier sort.
566. Many dogs, solely from want of good condition, greatly disappoint their masters at the beginning of the season. You could not expect your hunter to undergo a hard day’s work without a previous course of tolerably severe exercise; and why expect it of your dog? A couple of hours’ quiet exercise in the cool of the morning or evening will not harden his feet, and get him into the wind and condition requisite for the performance you may desire of him some broiling day in the middle of August or early in September. If you do not like to disturb your game, and have no convenient country to hunt over, why should you not give him some gallops before the beginning of the shooting-season, when you are mounted on your trotting hackney? Think how greyhounds are by degrees brought into wind and hard meat before coursing commences. Such work on the road will greatly benefit his feet,[103] particularly if, on his return home in wet weather, they are bathed with a strong solution of salt and water. When the ground is hard and dry, they should be washed with warm water and soap, both to soothe them and to remove all dust and gravel. They might afterwards be gradually hardened by applying the salt and water. When they are inflamed and bruised, almost a magical cure might be effected by their being sponged with a solution of arnica—ten parts of water to one of arnica. Should the dog lick the lotion, dissolve a little aloes in it. If, by-the-bye, you would make it a rule personally to ascertain that attention is always paid to your dogs after a hard day’s work, and not leave them to the tender mercies of an uninterested servant, you would soon be amply repaid for your trouble by their additional performance. Many men make it a rule to send their dogs to the mountains a week or two before the grouse-shooting; but they seldom even then get sufficiently exercised, and their mettle is slacked (confessedly a temporary advantage with half broken, wild dogs), instead of being increased, by finding that, however many points they may make (at squeakers under their nose), they never secure a bird. A month’s road-work, with alterative medicine, is far better.
MUSCLE WANTED, NOT FAT.
567. Dogs severely worked should be fed abundantly on a nutritious diet. Hunters and stage-coach horses have an unlimited allowance, and the work of eager setters and pointers (in a hilly country particularly) is proportionately hard; but the constitutions of dogs vary so greatly that the quantity as well as quality of their diet should be considered; for it must be your aim to obtain the largest development of muscle with the least superfluity of flesh,—that enemy to pace and endurance in dog as surely as in horse and man. Yet this remark does not apply to a water retriever: he should have fat. It is a warm, well-fitting great coat, more impervious to wet than a Mackintosh,—furnished by Providence to whales, bears, and all animals that have to contend with cold; and obviously your patient companion will feel the benefit of one when he is shivering alongside you while you are lying perdu in a bed of damp rushes.[104]
NOSE IN CONDITION.
568. Having mentioned condition, I am led to observe, that in America I saw a pointer, which, from being hunted, I may say daily, Sundays excepted, could not be kept in condition on oatmeal and greaves, but which was put in hard flesh, and did his work admirably, when Indian-corn meal was substituted for the oatmeal. I have not seen it used in this country, but I can fancy it to be a heating food, better calculated for dogs at regular hard work than when they are summering.[105] It is well known that no food should be given in a very hot state,—not of a higher temperature than milk-warm; and that evening is the proper feeding-time, in order that the dogs may sleep immediately afterwards, and not be full when they are taken out for their morning’s work.
569. In India, I remember complaining to an old sportsman that I had much difficulty in keeping my dogs free from mange. He at once asked if I did not give them beef-tea with their rice. I acknowledged that I did. He said it was of too heating a nature. I tried mutton-broth, agreeably to his recommendation. Every vestige of mange vanished, but yet I could hardly believe it attributable to so slight a change in their diet, for very little meat was used. As the mutton was much dearer, I again tried the beef. It would not do. The mange reappeared. I was, therefore, obliged to return to the mutton, and continue it. The teeth of dogs show that flesh is a natural diet; and if they are wholly deprived of it when they are young, they will acquire most revolting habits,—feeding upon any filth they may find, and often rolling in it. The meat should be cooked.