THERE is nothing which contributes so much to a sportsman’s pleasure in the field as his faithful helper and friend, the dog. Of all your shooting companions there is not one that works his way deeper into your heart than he does. It makes no difference what manner or kind of dog he is, be it pointer or setter, foxhound or beagle, spaniel or bay dog, he is your dearest and closest shooting pal. To begin with, he is always a great flatterer, and who is not susceptible to flattery? You never stopped to think of it? But it is so. His admiration for you, and the affection which he lavishes upon you, is the craftiest and most subtle kind of flattery. He flatters you in so many ways; in his desire to be ever beside you; and in the expectant way in which he watches your shots, as much as to say, “I was sure that you would hit that one.” Last, but not least, his unfailing good nature. What could equal that? Wet or dry, parched with thirst, or shivering in the snow, in good luck or bad luck, with a warm bed and a full belly, or without either, your dog is the one friend on whom you can depend, under all conditions, to look up at you with love and affection in his eyes, to kiss your hand in contentment, just as you two are together for the sport which you both love.
I have owned all sorts and conditions of dogs, hounds and bird dogs, pointers and setters of high degree, plain nigger dogs, picked up on the plantation, whose only claim to blood lay in the quality of their nose, noisy little beagles, and stately, morose foxhounds, and just plain, everyday curs, but have never yet owned a dog in which I could not find a lot of good points to like and appreciate and as I look back, it is more than I can say for a lot of human animals that I have run into.
The trouble with most people, as far as their dogs are concerned, is that they treat a dog just like a dog, and no better. They don’t mistreat him, but they make that fatal mistake of always remembering that he is “just a dog.” If they could only forget that and treat him like a human being, the dog would soon forget himself and rise to heights of canine intelligence of which they never thought a four-footed animal was capable.
As Bosicotte summed it up, “Treat a dog like a man, and you will have a noble animal; treat him like a dog and you will have a poor beast that knows more than you do, because he can understand you but you cannot always understand him.” This applies just as much to the sick dog as the healthy one, and it is a good thing to remember when a dog is sick. You don’t have to be a veterinary to take care of him; try to treat him the way you treat a human being. If he is ill, take him in the house and keep him warm, try to find some symptom in him that you would look for in yourself, and then give him the same medicine that you would take yourself. Don’t throw him a bone under the barn floor. An ounce of prevention is always worth a pound of cure. Don’t wait until the poor dog is too sick to drag himself around before you try to help him. If you give him five minutes of attention every day, and he is certainly worth that; if you take his head in your hands and talk to him, and pet him a little bit once in a while, you will soon know him well enough to know whether he is feeling all right or if he is getting sick. The only difference between his feelings and yours is that he cannot speak to you in your language to complain and if he is a well-bred dog he probably wouldn’t complain as much as you would, even if he could talk.
There is as much innate nobleness in a well-bred animal as there is in a well-bred person, and the most refined and delicate disposition is no more responsive to kindness than a thoroughbred dog or horse.
Speaking of dogs brings back to my mind the vision of my first shooting companion. Spot was a black and white foxhound, a cross between the fast Southern racy type and the slow, full-voiced New England hound. He had all the size and bone and the voice of the New Englander, plus the speed and short ears of his Buckfield Blue ancestors. Spot wasn’t a particularly handsome hound, but I thought he was the most beautiful one that ever lived. I don’t believe that there was ever any finer affection between two people than that of Spot and mine. He was distinctly a one man dog. Crazy as he was to hunt, no one else could ever entice him to go with him, nor would he, as most hounds do, wander off and range the woods by himself, but when I put on an old hunting coat and picked up my gun, he was about the happiest fellow one can imagine. He was probably more responsible for the fact that I am a good shot today than anything else connected with my training. He had the truest nose, the sharpest voice, and was the fastest trailer I ever saw. Anything that Spot jumped would hole up immediately, or start away on a straight line like a streak of greased lightning. I learned to kill rabbits going just as fast as they could travel with Spot fifteen or twenty feet behind them. Why I never blew his head off I don’t understand to this day. He had one peculiar trick which you seldom see in a hound and that is, he would retrieve perfectly the game killed. It was not an infrequent thing for Spot to run a rabbit down in the open, catch him, and lay him at my feet, and if hunting with friends he would beat any number of dogs if they tried to take it way from him, or interfered with his retrieving as he thought he should.
Many dogs are not constant in their affection and lavish it on everybody, but some dogs have one love and one only. Spot was one of those. As I grew up I had occasion to go away. I didn’t return for over a year and a half, and in the time I was gone that dog never went out hunting. He simply wouldn’t hunt with anybody else.
Another marked experience that I had a few years later was with a beautiful old New England foxhound (named Juno), that belonged to a friend of mine. Juno was one of the typical black, white and tan hounds, big boned, loud voiced, twenty-four inches to the shoulders, and twenty-two inches across the ears. The nearest approach I ever saw to Juno was in the Winchester advertisement that used to hang in the local sporting goods store. Many of you will remember that picture if you care for hounds.
Juno was getting old. She had raised several families of puppies for her master and, as the country was particularly hard in our section, he decided to sell her. Juno was sold to a man living about thirty miles distant. A few days later he received a letter from the man saying that Juno had broken her collar and gotten away and a couple of hours after the postman arrived, Juno walked in.
She was sent back to him the next day and the following week, after keeping her chained up, he took her hunting. This time she knew the way and the next morning she was back home. So my friend decided that Juno would have to go farther away and he sold her to a man in another state, about one hundred and forty-five miles from where he lived.
Juno was put in a big box with a little straw, a tomato can in the end of it for water, and a couple of dog biscuits, and so she left. He didn’t hear from that man regarding Juno for about six weeks and one frosty morning he heard a whining and scratching at the door and when he went down to open it, Juno, or what had once been Juno, staggered in. There was hardly an ounce of flesh on the dog’s body, her nails were worn down to the quick, her feet were torn and bleeding, and she was almost starved to death, but she had found her way home. How that dog ever traveled and found her way back all that distance through the rugged, wooded and mountainous country, after having been delivered over the steel rails in a closed freight car to her destination, is more than I can imagine. How many hundreds of miles she had covered in finding her way home, her condition testified to.
Needless to say, that man got his check back by the next mail and Juno stayed home to end her days. When she got too old to follow us afield, she spent her declining days teaching the young puppies on two old swamp rabbits that lived in a little valley back of the house, and I hear her wonderfully melodious voice now, resounding back and forth across that valley, almost as distinctly as I heard it so many years ago.
I have always felt that there is something more endearing in a hound than in a bird dog. The bird dog is a sort of superior being who possibly isn’t quite as demonstrative in his affection as a hound and he is more headstrong, but he loves you just as dearly.
Thinking of bird dogs, I always recall first a brace of black and white pointers, the finest of their type that I ever saw, that belonged to an old Englishman who gave me my first lesson in partridge shooting. These dogs were as pretty a pair as it was ever my pleasure to shoot over. They worked together perfectly and backed each other in splendid style. Lord and Lady Algy were their names, and I have seen Lady point a covey while hanging on the top rail of a fence when she got the scent in the act of scrambling over. I have also seen the same dog in hot, dry weather, at the end of a long day’s tramp, lie down on her side on a point and slowly wag her tail until you came up.
I always learned something more than the act of shooting when I was with this sportsman. I learned how to treat a dog; he talked more to the dogs than he did to me and they understood every word he said.
When we quit a field to drive to stubble, some little way off, the dogs got in the back of the cart and rode, and when we got home at night after a hard day they were given a hot meal and their feet and ears were gone over to pick out the thorns that were in them and then rubbed with lard to heal the scratches. Just as soon as we lit our pipes they would come up and place their forepaws in our laps to get their nightly inspection. And if it had been cold and wet they each had their drop of brandy to ward off rheumatism. They did not groan and squirm in their sleep as so many dogs do, because they slept comfortably.
Some years ago, while hunting in the South on a friend’s estate, I made the acquaintance of Laddie, a thoroughbred pointer of the bluest blue blood. Laddie, I believe, could trace his ancestry back a great deal farther than I ever could, and I always felt that I had reason to be proud of mine. Laddie showed you that he felt the dignity of his ancestry, and that it weighed heavily upon his mind that he should always live up to the fine long record behind him.
Laddie was never undignified, he was never effusive, he never lost his poise in the field or at home, no matter what society he was in. He won a field trial when he was fifteen months old and he never showed any particular feeling about it, one way or the other. He was as dignified and held himself just as much aloof from common dogs, or dogs of less rank than himself, at that tender age, as he did later. In fact he was royal all the way through. He knew it and took it for granted that everybody else knew it, and he never allowed anybody, including himself, to forget it.
He was the largest, healthiest and best looking liver and white pointer that I ever saw. His head was as perfect and clear cut as some Grecian cameo.
At the same time Laddie was human, or I should say canine, to a degree, and as affectionate as any dog I ever knew. I have no doubt he knew perfectly well that he was good looking, he always liked to show himself off, but he was perfectly willing to tear himself up in the green briers and blackberries. He started in as a pup on woodcock and, as he gained in strength and speed, he followed the older dogs out partridge hunting and soon was an acknowledged leader. I can see him now, galloping back and forth over a wheat stubble, his head held high in the air, and his nose would scent a covey of birds just as quickly there as it would on the ground.
Laddie knew just as well what we were going to hunt as I did, and if we put on rubber boots when starting out in the morning, he knew quite well that we were going duck shooting and would not take him, and he would lie down discontentedly again, by the fire. Finally, one day in hunting along some river farms where the partridge shooting was exceptionally good as a rule, we struck an off afternoon, and passing a friend’s house he hailed us and invited us to go off to a point in front of his farm where he had a blind baited, and share the duck shooting with him.
Laddie sat discontentedly on the shore as we pushed off in a skiff and ran up and down the edge whimpering as we rowed away, the blind being about one hundred yards off shore. Finally, as we paid no attention to him, he went back and lay down with his nose on his paws watching the blind. A little while later a bunch of ducks flew into the decoy, and on the report of the two guns Laddie was up, tearing back and forth along the beach, barking and whining, for once in his life excited. He couldn’t, however, overcome the pointer’s natural dislike for water and finally he subsided into his nest on the beach until another flock came along.
This time he waded out, up to his chest in the water, crying and whimpering and looking more miserable than I had ever seen him before. In a few minutes we forgot all about Laddie; the ducks were coming in fast. The evening flight was on and flock after flock were going past, occasionally one coming in. We had several ducks in the water but did not have time to bag any. All the time we had been shooting I was dimly conscious of Laddie, whimpering and whining near by. As the shooting let up for a few moments, I looked out and heard a whining close by and, lo and behold! just outside of the blind was Laddie in about ten feet of water, yelping and crying, after taking the first swim he had had in his life, vainly trying to climb into the blind to find out what the devil we were all shooting at!
After much excitement on everybody’s part, we finally pulled him in with us and when we shoved off later to pick up our ducks, the last thing in the boat was Laddie who jumped out of the blind into the skiff, at the peril of his own limbs and nearly swamping us. He had watched from the blind as we shot and voiced his appreciation of our marksmanship by yelping every time a bird hit the water. It was dark when we shoved off to get them and we never could have picked up half our day’s bag if it had not been for him. Standing in the bow of the boat, he would indicate, by pointing, where they lay and one by one, as we rowed in the direction he was watching, he picked them out of the water and dropped them in the bottom of the boat as proudly as if he had shot them himself.
Laddie had made himself a valuable asset to our duck shooting equipment and, long after the old fellow was too stiff in his joints to stand a day’s hunting in the stubble, he still went out duck shooting, with a blanket provided to keep him warm in the blind, and had a wonderful time picking up the ducks and dropping them into the boat, a pleasure of which nobody ever thought of depriving Laddie.
When my time comes, I hope I shall pass out as nobly as poor old Laddie did. It was a couple of years ago. Laddie had not been out with me for two seasons and when I went down to the old hunting ground, he scrambled to his feet and came gravely forward to greet me and pay his respects. His joints were stiff with age and rheumatism; he could hardly see, for his eyes were covered with cataracts, but he was still a beautiful old dog. “Clayton,” I said, “I want to take Laddie out tomorrow for I may not see him again.” The old fellow blinked his watery eyes and wagged his tail slowly, and then, with a sigh of contentment, lay down before the stove. “Oh! he can’t stand it,” Clayton replied. “We will come back tomorrow and give him a whirl down in the branch if you wish.” The old fellow was restless and got up several times to have his head scratched.
The next day was devoted to ducks but about noon we returned and the gum boots were changed for shorter leather ones and the old ten-bore for a light, short twelve.
Laddie knew it was his day and “stood by” as we got ready. He rode in the cart between my knees and I lifted him out when we got to the field where we tied up the horse.
When Laddie found a place where he could get through the fence, the other young dogs had covered half of it. Away he went at a gallop—head and tail up—but in a few hundred yards he had slowed down to a trot.
“Clayt” sat on the fence and the young dogs finally came back. “Well,” he said, “I reckon there isn’t anything here this evening.” Laddie was a spot on the far side of the immense field, slowly moving along. As I watched him, he drew a corner, stopped, moved up, froze.
“Clayt,” I said, “look at Laddie!”
“Well the old son of a gun!” he exclaimed, “fooled the young ones. Get your camera out. You’ll never get another picture of him.” As we came up, the young dogs backed and old Laddie moved his head about to look at us and slowly wagged the tip of his tail as if to say, “I found them.”
I shall never forget that picture, on the side hill with the setting sun back of the trees and the young ones backing the old master, as with square muzzle stretched forward slightly to the side, one forepaw up and tail out straight, he stood—a beautiful picture.
“Clayt,” I said, “get those two young cubs and tie them to the fence. This is Laddie’s day.” Meanwhile the old fellow stood like a rock. When “Clayt” came back I stepped in, and a small covey bounced with a roar and started for the branch, but three stayed with us and Laddie retrieved them. Into the swale we three went and six times he pointed and six times a single came to bag, though several times we backed each other with a second shot so that Laddie would not be disappointed.
Finally we came out and the old fellow slowly dragged himself across the field to the cart.
When we got home, after an early dinner, he placed his noble head on my knee and I stroked it for a while. Then he stretched himself out before the fire, head on paws, with a sigh of contentment, to dream over the day. I dreamed with him for a while and then leaned over to stroke his head—it slipped off the paw on to the rag rug—Laddie had passed.
In remembrance of this old fellow, let me say a few words in conclusion. Treat your dog like an equal. Don’t expect him to go through briers that you refuse to share with him. If they are too thick for your canvas, they are too thick for his skin. The man that gets the game is the one who is in the briers first, and calls his dog in. I have seen many a good dog give up early in the day—discouraged by a lazy hunter.
And don’t forget, the cheapest thing that you can expend on him is encouragement. Many and many a time near the close of a hard day, when my dog came up tired and stood dejectedly beside me, I have sat down to smoke, called him to me, talked to him, petted him for a minute, told him what an excellent dog he was, and then, at a cheerful “Hi! On!” have seen him spring forward like a new animal to hunt another field. Whereby I added a couple of brace to my bag. Believe me, it pays!