The Scientific Education of Dogs for the Gun (History of Shooting Series - Gundogs & Training)

By H. Nevill Fitt

The author writes from his then thirty-seven years of practical experience, beginning with his first successfully trained Pointer as a teenager. Some of his methods will prove controversial, but the overall advice given in this book has easily stood the test of time and will benefit all first-time trainers or anyone wishing to improve on their present methods. 220 pages contain sixteen detailed chapters dealing with: - "The Rationalle." - Kennel Management. - Retrievers ( 4 chapters). - Wild Fowling. - Pointers and Setters (8 chapters). - Field Trials. - Spaniels. The eight chapters concentrating on the "breaking" or training of Pointers and Setters will prove of enormous interest to shooting men, field triallers, and falconers. The author's admiration for the reasoning power of the dog, which makes itself evident on every other page, will assuredly be shared by all who read this book. Many of the earliest sporting books, particularly those dating back to the 1800s, are now extremely scarce and very expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Country Book
• Release date: Jan 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528769822

Book preview

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

THE RATIONALE.

BEFORE a man sets himself seriously to any work or business, he first of all invariably either gathers from the experience of others or evolves of his own inner consciousness a full perception of the end to which he purposes to attain; and not only so, but to a greater or less degree the means by which he intends to compass that end. The ordinary dog-breaker is an exception to this common-sense rule; he has but a very hazy idea of what he wants, and a still more hazy one of how to obtain it. I am quite aware that the greater part of the professors of the art would utterly deny this impeachment. They think they know both, and this is the reason why, as a rule, they are such utter failures.

Here’s a setter or a pointer, they say; he has got to be made to point, back, come to whistle or holloa, drop to wing and shot, and not chase, &c.; here’s a retriever, he has got never to go till he’s told, and then he has got to find the bird and bring it back. A good shrill whistle, a good stout whip, a check cord and spiked collar for emergencies, and a plentiful command of language, and the thing is done. Is it? Follow this system and succeed in your object, and in nine cases out of ten you get a sulky slave, a senseless automaton, a mechanical apparatus. It may serve its turn, do its business as long as no complication occurs, but the moment you want something out of the common, presence of mind, thought, or great courage and perseverance, you are nowhere. I say the dog-breaker has to do this; he has an animal which has a certain instinct inherent and cultivated by transmission; that instinct always has an object in view. In sporting dogs the object is to catch the game in one way or another. The breaker has to cultivate that instinct in the same direction, as a rule, in which it naturally leads, and so to raise it into something far higher than instinct, even into the Reasoning Power, which is supposed by some to be the attribute of man only; and then to get that reasoning power to direct the actions of the animal toward the end it naturally has in view, so that it shall discover of its own head that self-control and obedience are the best, and indeed the only, way of attaining its desires, which desires shall ere long be identical with his own.

It is often said, Very few men can break a dog. I quite agree that very few men do, but I don’t believe in the cannot, if they will only take the same pains to learn this science as they take to learn many a lower one. There are certain attributes a man must have, of course. He must be fond of animals, he must have great patience, perseverance, and a perfect control of temper. He must also have prompt decision and a strong will. If you have these, you can break a dog, and do it well, too; but if you are going to be a first-rate dog-breaker, you must have something else, too, and it is a case here of nascitur non fit. You must have, first, a natural and sharp intuition into character, be able to know what a dog is thinking about, and how he is going to carry out his thoughts; and secondly, lots of animal magnetism. It is perfectly astounding what a man with this can do with an animal, where a man devoid of it can do nothing at all. I have held a lot of dogs by the magnetic power of will from doing wrong hundreds of yards away from me till they have given up their intense wish to run riot; while, on the other hand, I have, as I was thus holding them, turned to address a remark to a friend sotto voce, and thus broken the link of connection, and, hey presto! the spell is dissolved, and every sort of devilry is committed. I dare say I shall be told that this sort of thing is done by the power of the eye. It is a common thing to say (I have said it often myself before I learned better), but how on earth can your eye influence anything a quarter of a mile away, especially when the thing to be influenced has its back to you? I will give some good instances of this sort of thing farther on.

CHAPTER II.

KENNEL MANAGEMENT.

IT may be said that the housing and the feeding of dogs have but little to do with their education.

Excuse me! They have everything to do with it. A young dog, just like a child, must be in perfect health in order to assimilate knowledge, and if either the one or the other is sickly or unwell, far better let him alone altogether until he is perfectly restored to his normal salubrity. Now the health of a dog is positively dependent on kennels, feeding, and proper exercise.

First their Kennels.

It is to me perfectly astounding the carelessness and short-sightedness of the generality of the world about the way in which they lodge their dogs. Here is a man who does not care what he gives for a brace or two of setters or pointers, and resolves to go in for breeding on a large scale perhaps. He will spare no expense in having the very best food and the best attendance he can procure, and yet those same dogs are lodged in a draughty, undrained, damp, stinking hole that is not fit to put a pig in, and so one fine morning out comes a brace of these priceless ones. Dear me, Don has got a cough; I wonder how he got that. Why from sleeping most likely in a thorough draught, or on damp straw. Or, after your crack has put up a single bird or two up wind without an attempt at a find, or got so close to a covey that it has risen before you could get up, Why, Belle’s nose seems to be gone to-day.

What wonder, when she has been in a reeking atmosphere of foul drains for a week? Or, again, Dido goes very dicky over that plough, moves her legs fast enough, but can’t get away at the shoulders and hips. Why, what’s up with the bitch? I am sure she is not stale from overwork. Not she; but how would you be moving, think you, if you had been paddling about for a day and a night or two on wet flags without shoes on?

And, then, again, How unlucky I am about distemper, always have such a bad form, and, if the pups get over it, they have yellows after, which is ten times worse. Distemper is bad enough at any time, but if it is contracted in the pestilential atmosphere of drains and putrid excreta it is awful; and as to yellows, in nine cases out of ten, that comes from chill and exposure to damp, when in a weakened or unhealthy state; the dog is not strong enough to cast it off in the usual robust way, so straight it goes to the liver. And you run all these risks and incur unspeakable losses because you don’t see the use of spending a few pounds on animals for which you have given hundreds, or that, may be, you value at thousands.

Now, on this subject I feel most deeply. I have all my life tried my best to lodge my dogs properly, but I have had to learn by bitter experience and terrible losses what proper lodging means, and if I cannot now lodge a dog properly I will not have him at all.

Now, I will just give what I consider to be the beau ideal of a kennel and of kennel management, and I do beseech my fellow sportsmen to give the matter their careful attention, and to trust me that it will pay them better than anything they ever did in their lives.

I shall give what I consider to be the best dimensions; these, of course, can be modified according to purse and available room, but do not defraud your dogs of a single square inch that you can afford to give them.

First of all, choose, if you can, as a site, a field with gravelly or sandy subsoil sloping gently toward the southeast, and thoroughly under-drain the whole piece of land.

Build of brick or stone a house of dimensions sufficient to provide two rooms facing different ways, each fifteen feet square, each having an open yard, certainly not less than the same dimensions. The object of the different aspects is that you may put your most delicate, or best dogs, to the south-east in winter, and the north-west in summer. A better plan than this is to have the two yards opening from each house, so that the dogs may be let into whichever yard is best according to wind and weather.

A kennel like this 15ft. by 15ft. may accommodate four dogs, but I vastly prefer keeping only two in it. Crowding is a terrible evil. The walls should be cemented smooth inside, and the best flooring, I think, is the old-fashioned, large, blue flag-stones, perfectly laid, and all joints cemented level. The best plan of draining is to make the floor of the house slope slightly towards the yard, and that of the yard slope away to a deep, open, and wide gutter at the bottom, which gutter slopes itself to the outside of the kennel, and continues open when it gets outside for several feet, when it terminates in a grated drain, which should then continue underground till it empties itself into a cesspool, covered of course, fifty yards at least from any dog habitation. If you have two kennels, side by side, never allow the open gutter to pass from one to the other, but let each have a separate and distinct outlet.

Let your dog and bitch kennels be entirely distinct, and, if possible, some distance from each other (that is, unless you have separate houses on purpose for bitches at certain seasons, which, perhaps, is preferable). Here I can mention a tip, which was given me by a sporting doctor three years ago, and which I have proved to be unfailing, even in the middle of a Canadian town infested with hundreds of curs of every degree. If you seclude a bitch up a flight of steps you will never have any followers sneaking round.

For other requisites, you must have a boiling-house, of course, and next to it, if possible, so that it is slightly warmed by it, have a small room with a boarded floor, about 10ft. by 10ft., say. Keep this full, right to the ceiling, with clean wheat or oat straw, and when your dogs come in wet, tired, and muddy, turn them right in before feeding and shut them up for an hour. They will come out in about that time, dry, warm, and cheerful; they will have a good appetite for their food, and repose upon their own nice, dry bed without wetting it. I do not remember ever having had a dog catch a chill since I adopted this plan. The straw in the drying chamber will last a long time, and when done with, it will do for cattle or pig-bedding.

It is positively necessary to have a hospital. For this purpose build a cottage of four rooms, two upstairs, two down. Let it be well away from the kennels and boiling-house; let the rooms be divided by a passage, and let each one be dry, warm, and high enough to put yourself in if you had an attack of fever. There must be a fireplace in each room, and plenty of light and ventilation; the floors must be boarded with tongue and groove. When you have an invalid, cover the floors with perfectly dry sawdust, six inches deep; remove all excreta and urine as soon as deposited; dust the place with a disinfectant, and fill up with fresh sawdust. Fireplaces are far better than stoves.

The lower story may have small yards connected with it, where the convalescent can disport himself in fine weather.

Let all your dog lodgings be very light; no draught of any sort, but any amount of facility for thorough ventilation—much or little as required.

The door which opens into the yard should be at the end, not in the middle of the sleeping house, and there should be a sliding trap-door in it, to be opened or closed at pleasure; inside, by the side of this trap-door, should be placed a screen of wood, to prevent the draught which comes through it from blowing on to the bedsteads. I need not describe these bedsteads.

Now, as to cleaning out. Never let a place be washed unless the dogs are taken out, and not put back until it is as dry as a bone, 2nd when you do wash always finish off with a dose of diluted chloride of lime. In the common usage of washing kennels, there are two great evils, which cause several kinds of disease, rheumatism, and sometimes death.

The first is a constant, everlasting damp to the feet, and exhalations to all the rest of the body. I have seen lots of kennels that are never dry.

Again, and worse, the damp is one of diluted evacuations, which are intensely poisonous. Those watery, mattery eyes one sees so often in dogs are the effect of this monstrous neglect of common sanitary knowledge, and any amount of other diseases as well.

My ordinary method of cleaning is the following:—

Three times a day at least, in fact as often as there is occasion, lay over all fouled spots dry ashes, or better, if you can get it, perfectly dry sand or soil; you can then at once take up each heap separately with a shovel, or else sweep the whole out together, and cart it right away; the flags should be quite dry after the sweeping, if they are not you can add more sand; then, when all is finished, dust the kennel sparsely with one of the numerous disinfectants. Both McDougall’s and Calvert’s I have used. You may go on in this way for weeks and months, and keep your kennel perfectly sweet, clean, and healthy, without putting a drop of water into it.

Choose a fine warm day when you want a regular ablution, and let the dogs be right away till the kennel is perfectly dry. Now, I have heard it advanced that catholic preparations are apt to affect a dog’s nose. This is not the case—at least, I think most people will consider the following sufficient proof of my assertion:—When living in British Columbia I used Calvert’s preparation for my dogs in positive excess. Not only for the purification of kennels did I use it—not only were the bedsteads, too, covered with it, but I regularly every morning dusted their coats with it, and then rubbed it well in. The purpose was to keep down fleas, which swarmed in those parts in countless myriads at certain times of the year, and the process was so effective that none of these parasites troubled my dogs any more, and all this time the dogs were doing grand work on game; besides, I have used these preparations ever since in the most unsparing manner, and have never seen the slightest harm accrue. At all events, carbolic is much less likely to affect the scenting powers than the exhalations and inhalations of those deleterious gases which it certainly most effectually counteracts.

I would have my readers, however, mark well that I only answer for the harmlessness of the two carbolic preparations above mentioned. It is also proper to add that several good judges differ from my opinion as to the innocuous nature of even these to a dog’s scenting powers. At all events, the most nervous man may be perfectly sure of their harmlessness if he takes care to have the kennels dusted with the preparation whilst the dogs are at exercise; on their return the smell will have evaporated and the dust subsided.

There is also a very charming preparation called Sanitas, that I have just now begun to use. It is a preparation of lime, I believe, and its effect is perfect.

The kennel system above sketched is, of course, an expensive one, but such, I am confident for a permanent establishment, would pay an owner of valuable dogs at least 100 per cent. For temporary purposes, at shooting lodges, leasehold houses, &c., I should myself go in for the moveable affairs, turned out in perfect style by Boulton and Paul, of Norwich. I purchased one a short time since; and, considering its miniature size, it is first rate for the purpose. Of course the size could easily be altered; indeed, I have myself, by turning the passage at the back into a sleeping house, made it most comfortable for the night residence of two large dogs.

Before leaving sanitary subjects, let me recommend every dog keeper to invest in a little book called Diseases of the Dog, by Hugh Dalziel (publisher, Gill, Strand). It is the best and most concise book ever written on the subject, the author’s treatment of distemper and cutaneous diseases especially being most simple and efficacious.

For puppies it is a very important thing to have a good-sized grass-run, fenced in with strong wire netting attached to the kennel. In fine and dry weather you can then give your dogs the run of the whole, confining them in the more sheltered apartments during wet and cold. The field ought not to be on clay subsoil; any other will do. An ordinary large water-tight wooden kennel well raised off the ground, and placed in a grass-run wired in, will answer very well for most puppies as long as they continue in health, but care must be taken to cover all excrements with sand or soil daily.

Feeding.

Feeding is a most important point. My habit has always been with regard to puppies up to four or five months old to feed three times a day.

Breakfast at seven: bread and new milk. Luncheon at twelve: strong soup, thickened with boiled oatmeal or biscuit. Dinner at six, the principal feed, and nothing is better than biscuits soaked in cold water at night, boiled in the morning, and then mashed up with the hand into a porridge. Give boiled cabbage minced up fine, and well mixed with this last, twice or thrice a week. After four or five months omit the luncheon at twelve, and milk altogether, except occasionally, for a variety; give soup and bread, and all the moderate-sized bones you can get for breakfast, and after two or three months more you can omit the soup, and give one biscuit dry or soaked (I prefer dry) for breakfast.

Make it a hard-and-fast rule never to allow any food of any sort, except a bone, to remain in the dog’s pan uneaten; remove it at once as soon as he shows signs of having satisfied his appetite, or sooner if he is a very voracious feeder. Never give any food of any sort which is not perfectly sweet and fresh, i.e., in a condition in which you would eat it yourself. Every now and then give a dinner of well-cleaned and boiled paunches, or of fresh cooked meat, instead of the biscuits.

Watch your dog’s health very closely (the best index to this is the state of his bowels), and feed him accordingly. Boiled oatmeal, mixed with flesh or greaves, is the finest and best of all foods for working dogs, and boiled maize meal similarly prepared makes a good change of diet. It is well too, sometimes, to mix a little boiled rice with each, especially if there is a tendency to looseness in the bowels, but the great trouble and care required in preparing this, and its tendency to go bad very quickly, makes it only suitable for large kennels. In winter you may prepare enough at a time to last for three days, but in warm weather it should properly be prepared daily.

One word about greaves. This is a very useful and healthy food to mix with oat and other meals, but great care should be taken where it is procured.

It is necessary to purchase from large manufactories where the cakes are formed and finished at once. If the stuff is allowed to remain a day or so before it is pressed and finished, some parts may be stale and even putrid. I speak feelingly on this subject, for I very nearly lost a whole kennel of valuable dogs by buying one cake at a country town to fill up a gap till my next big batch arrived. Violent diarrhœa was the consequence, and a refusal of all food. I was myself absent from home at the time, but my man, who was very careful, telegraphed to me the case, and in a few hours the whole kennel was under the treatment of a first-class veterinary surgeon. To show how virulent was the effect of the poison, some of the dogs had to be fed with soup by hand for several days, and for ten days the lives of all were in danger; and, although it was six weeks from the catastrophe when I returned home, every dog was a bag of bones, the whole kennel when I left having been in simply superb condition.

Let every lover of the dog bear always and most carefully in mind that all scientific education is simply thrown away on anything which does not possess Mens sana in corpore sano, and that the most scrupulous care in feeding is most necessary to secure both.

Last but not least comes

Exercise.

The beau ideal of a kennel, as before stated, is to have a properly fenced grass-run to each separate yard. The beau ideal to complete this arrangement is to have these to open out again into a general playground, which should be an old meadow (if possible) with an impervious fence all round it, and no rabbits in the said fence. Of course you need not keep it exclusively for dogs. Sheep, cattle, and horses can feed in it as much as you like, only take care that the two last-named are broken quiet