The spaniel should be broken early. Eight months old is quite late
enough to enter on game if good breaking is required, and all hand
breaking should precede this entry, and should follow the lines proper
both for retrievers and pointers as far as they apply to individual
requirements.
If one has to allow dogs to “run in” and chase game, to get up their
keenness for hunting, it is a misfortune, and the task of breaking will
become all the harder. In a good breed this encouragement will not be
required. It is always hard to create opposites simultaneously, and to
_make_ a dog both bold and obedient.
The principal requirement in the hunting spaniel is nose, quickness,
never going out of gun-shot, instant obedience, and bustling up game in
a hurry without chasing it when it is up, dropping to shot, and
retrieving dead and wounded game when told. It is a large order, and yet
dogs that can do it all often make no more than £15 at auction, and
sometimes less.
It is obvious that a well-bred spaniel will start hunting as soon as he
is introduced to the smell of game, then his range must be taught either
by using a line or by voice and whistle. In thick covert the former is
not possible. The principal difficulty is to stop the puppy as soon as
he has moved his game. Again, either voice or cord can be made to do the
business, but probably a little of both will bring about the required
education sooner than either by itself. The system should be to prevent
the chase, not to punish for that which is instinctive in the pupil.
Consequently, the quick obedience to voice spoken of as necessary for
setters and pointers, becomes doubly so for spaniels, and they really
ought to tumble over to voice or gun as if the latter had done it. But
this instinctive obedience cannot be taught during entry upon game, and
consequently until it is perfected the puppy is not fit to enter.
It is much more of a strain on the instinct of the spaniel to stop him
when he is bustling up game than it is to stop the setter when game
rises or runs away from his point. In one case restraint follows upon
restraint, in the other it follows excitement let loose.
Retrieving should be taught the same way as for a retriever proper, and
if it precedes the work of entering upon the finding of live game, the
latter will be all the easier for the breaker.
Wild spaniels in very thick cover are of more use than a highly broken
team. Where the covert is so thick that a worker of spaniels cannot get
into the thick parts, his highly broken dogs will not go there either,
because they have learnt to keep near to him. In this case, four or six
couples of wild spaniels to hunt up wild pheasants, woodcock, and
rabbits, make beautiful sport, but they usually need several whippers-in
to keep them somewhere in the neighbourhood of the shooters.
A friend of the author’s was once expatiating on the improved methods of
pheasant shooting, and explaining that the last generation knew nothing
of the charms and the art of killing driven birds, when, at that moment,
wild spaniels on the hill above us flushed four cock pheasants, they
came at us swerving through the trees down hill at a cannon-ball pace,
and four shots did not touch a feather. Yet this was the old style of
pheasant shooting—at least in that district, and it was on record there
that the last generation were first-rate performers in covert and out.
Amongst other birds they killed flighting duck and sometimes flighting
teal also at night, all of which, including the down-hill rocketers from
the spaniels on the hillside, are out of all proportion harder to kill
than the best birds that ever flew across the open and flat ground from
one covert to another, however the latter have “sailed” and “curved” in
their flights.
By mutual consent, after missing the cocks, we changed the subject of
conversation.
It has been said that field trials have brought some good dogs to the
front, and enabled those who go to trials to judge for themselves of the
merits of individuals and of races; but they have also done injury in
one direction. There may be differences of opinion amongst sportsmen on
how spaniels should be judged at field trials, but there can be no
question that the use of field trials as a mere show dog advertisement
is misleading and objectionable. As these remarks are written, there is
an advertisement of spaniels appearing in which it is stated that the
owner’s breed has won “800 field trial and show prizes.” What the author
knows of the breed is that upon one occasion they won a prize at a field
trial,—a prize that was ear-marked for the breed,—and won it because
competition was weak and limited. That they have won 799 show prizes is
not denied. But if this is the way to advertise show dogs, then the
sooner field trials are dropped the better in the true interests of
sport. In this direction lies the danger to sporting interests; and
little differences about means and methods of judging are of
_comparatively no importance_. A variety of judges have acted under a
large variety of rules, and to the credit of the former, and in spite of
the latter, the best dogs have nearly, or quite always, got the stakes.
But there is also a tendency amongst judges to give the smaller prizes
and certificates of merit because a dog has done no harm, although he
may not have done any good.
If it is correct to absolutely disqualify a dog for ranging beyond
gun-shot and for chasing game (and it must be so in the interests of
sport), then, on the ground that every dog can be broken but not a tenth
of them are worth breaking, it is also essential to disqualify a dog
that cannot find game.
It is because the latter has not always been done that these remarks are
necessary. The quantity of game left behind unfound by the dogs that
have won minor prizes has surprised not only the author, but others also
who have come to visit these trials once, _and no more_. On the other
hand, the best winners have always been the best finders that passed the
not very severe breaking standard, as indicated above, and that is
obviously right.