is as cruel to punish a
young animal for gnawing and biting inanimate objects, as it is to
strike a teething infant who is similarly prone to use his teeth on
anything he can get hold of. We generally supply such a child with a
bone ring or something equally safe to bite; and if we do not give a
puppy a bone, he will quickly find something for himself. I have a
sheep-dog pup who, having gnawed and buried a boot in the paddock, was
brought to me for correction. I gave him a "good talking to" and
ordered him to lie down near me under the table, where I believed he
would be out of mischief. I went on with my work and thought he was
asleep, but when I bent down and looked at him, I found him busy at a
large hole he was biting in our carpet! It was all my fault--he ought to
have had a bone.

We now come to the important question of corporal punishment, which I
have deferred, as I hate it, but I know that it is a necessary evil.
Solomon's warning about sparing the rod is more applicable, I think, to
foxhounds than to children, for the spoilt hound has before him a
fearful day of reckoning which a child may escape. Therefore our
supposed kindness in ignoring sins of omission or commission is, in the
case of a young hound, a cruel wrong which will assuredly cause him a
great deal of suffering that timely correction on our part may avert. In
the first place we ought to insist on implicit obedience, not by
coaxing, but by the whip, for if a hound wilfully disobeys the person
whom he loves as his mother, how much less will he be inclined to obey
the orders of a stranger who is his whipper-in? When it is necessary to
punish a glaring offence concerning which the lady walker, who is acting
the part of mentor, has given an unheeded warning, the offender should
be well whipped by someone told off to perform this operation, and when
they fly to her for sympathy, she should remain silent as one who knows
they have been justly punished. If she has to undertake these salutary
thrashings herself, she should call the hounds to her in a tone of
voice which she knows they can hear, and if, as frequently happens, they
hesitate for a moment, look at her and then decide to disobey her
command, she should follow them up, still calling on them to come to
her, but now in a severer tone, and the disobedient ones will generally
falter and take refuge in any available place. Then is the time to
punish them with a few sharp cuts of whip or cane. There