s well in-doors as out--but particularly in this, let it
be your aim to leave off at a moment when he has performed entirely to
your satisfaction; that you may part the best of friends, and that the
last impression made by the lesson may be pleasing as well as correct,
from a grateful recollection of the caresses which he has received. In
wild-duck shooting you may be in situations where you would be very glad
if the dog would bring your bird; and when it is an active runner in
cover, I fear you will be more anxious than I could wish--221--that the
dog should "fetch." It is probable that he will thus assist you if he be
practised as I have just advised; and such instruction may lead, years
hence, to his occasionally bringing you some dead bird which he may come
across, and which you otherwise might have imagined you had missed, for
its scent might be too cold, and consequently too changed, for the dog to
have thought of regularly pointing it.

87. Mark my having said "deliver into your hand," that your young dog may
not be satisfied with only dropping, within your sight, any bird he may
lift, and so, perhaps, leave it on the other side of a trout stream, as I
have seen dogs do more than once, in spite of every persuasion and
entreaty. With a young dog, who retrieves, never pick up a bird yourself,
however close it may fall to you. Invariably, make him either deliver it
into your hand or lay it at your feet. The former is by far the better
plan. If the dog has at one moment to drop the bird at your will, he is
likely to fancy himself privileged to drop it at another time for his own
convenience. In other respects, too, the former is the safest method. I
have a bitch now in my recollection, who frequently lost her master
slightly winged birds,--which she had admirably recovered--by dropping
them too soon on hearing the report of a gun, or coming on other game--for
off they ran, and fairly escaped, it being impracticable, by any
encouragement, to induce her to seek for a bird she had once lifted.

88. I observed it was something soft which you should teach your dog to
fetch. Probably you have seen a retriever taught to seek and bring a
stone, upon which, in a delicate manner, the tutor has spit. Does it not
stand to reason that the stone must have tended to give his pupil a hard
mouth? And what may, later in life, cause him much misery, in dashing at a
bounding stone, he may split a tooth. Dogs of an advanced age suffer mor