"Hunting Dogs" by Oliver Hartley, 1909

Reposted from 2010.

Teddy M. sent me a terrific link to an old now-public-domain book from which these pictures are lifted: Hunting Dogs, by Oliver Hartley

A couple of things leap out at me while reading through:

1. Many of the old working dogs were as ugly as a muddy river, and;
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2. People still tell hunting stories with the same humor they always have.

A few lines should suffice to demonstrate that last point:

I had an old speckled hound we called Teddy. He went in and when he backed out he had company with him, and he seemed to think a great deal of his company, for he was hanging right on to him just as though he thought his company might leave him if he got a chance. Ted was doing all he could, but he got him up so the other dogs could see Mr. 'Coon's back and then he had plenty of help and the 'coon's troubles were soon over.

Some coons, but a lot of skunk, and one dog that looks half pit.

The text and pictures are a very good read, for we are reminded that this book was written at about the time we had shot out almost all the game in this great county.

There are many reasons why the 'coon hunt is fast becoming one of the most popular of the manly sports. The 'coon is found in many sections of the United States. Other game is becoming very scarce. The wealthy business man, the man of affairs who is tied to his desk six days out of the week, can own a 'coon hound and in the stilly hours of the night, after the day's turmoil of business, can enjoy a few hours of the most strenuous sport now left to us and witness a battle royal between his faithful hound and the monarch of the forest, the wily 'coon. Nothing that I can contemplate is more exhilarating or more soothing to the nerves than the excitement of the 'coon hunt. From the first long drawn note when the trail is struck until the hound's victorious cry at the tree, it is one round of excitement and anticipation. What or whose hound is leading? What direction will Mr. Coon take? What dog will be first to tree? And then the fight! It is simply great! And then showing the hide to the boys who didn't go, and telling them about it for days to come.

The good news is that 100 years later deer, once scare, are now so common that I saw two on the way to work yesterday morning.

It may be bumper-to-bumper traffic from my house into the city, but I can still hunt deer from the front seat and watch bald eagles nesting while I do it!

Greyhounds said to be of a good type.

As for fox and raccoon, we have never had more animals in the history of this nation. The fecundity of Mother Nature is amazing, and if we will only protect habitat and regulate hunting in a sensible way (and we do), then she is only too happy to get up off the floor and dance a jig for us.

Of course it helps that coon and fox hunting is a little less popular than it once was. And for anyone who wonders why this is the case, the book helpfully explains!

The 'coon hunt calls for manhood. Tender weaklings cannot endure the exertions necessary to enjoy this sport. It is too strenuous for the lazy man or the effeminate man to enjoy. They shudder at the thoughts of donning a pair of heavy hip boots and tramping thru swamps and slashes, crossing creeks and barbed wire fences, thru briars and thickets, maybe for several miles, and the probability of getting lost and having to stay all night. But to the man with nerve and backbone this is one of the enjoyable features. It affords great fun to get a tenderfoot to go out for the first time and initiate him into the "'coon hunters' club." The tenderfoot will use every cuss word ever invented and will coin new ones when the supply of old ones becomes worn out and ineffective. He will cuss the briars, cuss the ditches, cuss the creek, cuss the fences, cuss the swamps, cuss the slashes, cuss the man who persuaded him to go, and finally cuss himself for going. But when the excitement of the chase is on and when the fight commences he becomes reconciled; and if good luck is had he is very likely to be the next man to propose another "'coon hunt."

Coonhounds in 1909.

Motley dogs with cased coon skins, and men with carbide lights.

This photo is captioned "fox hound graduates".

Captioned as "foxhounds worthy of the name."

Fox Terrier (what we would now call a Jack Russell)

Some things never change, of course.

The best advice any honest working dog man can give a novice is to stay away from the purebred Kennel Club show dog. As Hartley notes,

The ideal coon dogs of most experienced night hunters are the half bred fox hounds.

True enough today.

The rarest dog in the AKC is the purebred American Foxhound. Who wants a purebred from show lines? No one! And yet foxhounds are as common as stagnant water in this state, and the Masters of Foxhound Association is just an hour up the road from my house. What is rejected is not the foxhound, but the inbred and the nonworking version of these dogs.

Working dogs come with pedigrees too, but those pedigrees mean something, as attached to every dog going back five generations or more is a decent story or two about real work in the field.  Not trials with coons in cages, or farm-raised and just-planted birds, or pet sheep trained to follow any man or woman with a stick. Real work.
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The World As It Was and Should Be

I downloaded a dozen FREE books to my Kindle Fire last night, one of which was In Africa - Hunting Adventures In Big Game Country (1910) by John T. McCutcheon.

A quick glance through the table of contents found this summary of Chapter Eight:

Meeting Colonel Roosevelt in the Uttermost Outpost of Semi-Civilization. He Talks of Many Things, Hears that he has Been Reported Dead, and Promptly Plans an Elephant Hunt

Nice!

Now to be clear, I am not saluting elephant hunting, but neither would Teddy if he were alive today. This is, after all, the man who almost single-handedly created the National Forest system, the national Wildlife Refuge system, and the National Park system, and who did more to protect wildlife in this country than anyone who came before or who has come along since.

But Roosevelt believed in an active life, well-lived. He did not shrink into his hole, cuddle up next to the fire, and play board games all day. Life was to be lived, and he was out in the world living it. That is the world as it was, and the way it should be today.
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I Watched This on My Kindle

I watched this video on my Kindle Fire which does not need shelving, allows highlighting and margin notes, and sends all my highlighted text to a computer file for easy use if I am writing something ("Look Ma, no typing!").

All Kindle books are searchable, several million books are free, and all new books are cheaper than their printed versions (and most used books are cheaper too if you figure in postage).  If I do not know a particular word, I only have to hover a finger over i, and a definition pops up.

I still have hundreds of paper books, of course (not all books are online yet) but I can see that in the not-too-distant future they are going to be seen as very heavy furniture that collects dust and makes rooms look smaller.  Yes, paper books are very clearly going the way of "long-playing" records....
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Trap Line Dog

This story of dogs, dog training, and dog respect is ripped straight from the pages of Hunting Dogs by Oliver Hartley, printed in 1909 and now in the public domain.  Enjoy!

Several years ago I had a partner who had a dog, part stag hound and the other part just dog, I think.

One day he (my partner) asked if I would object to his bringing the dog to camp, saying that his wife was going on a visit and he had no place to leave the dog. I told him that if he had a good dog I would be glad to have him in camp. In a day or two pard went home and brought in the dog. Well, when he came the dog was following along behind his master with tail and ears drooping, and looking as though he never heard a kind word in his life. I asked if the animal was any good and he replied that he did not know how good he was. I asked the name of the dog. He said, "Oh, I call him Pont." I spoke to the dog, calling him by name. He looked at me wistfully, wagging his tail. The look that dog gave me said to me as plainly as words that this was the first kind word he had ever heard.

We went inside and the dog started to follow, when his master in a harsh voice said, "get out of here." I said, "where do you expect the dog to go?" I then took an old coat that was in the camp, placed it in the corner and called gently to Pont, patted the coat and told him to lay down on the coat, which he did. I patted him saying that is a good place for Pont, and I can see that wistful gaze the dog gave me, now. After we had our supper I asked my partner if he wasn't going to fix Pont some supper. "Oh, after a while I will see if I can't find something for him." I took a biscuit from the table, spread some butter on it, called the dog to me, broke the biscuit in pieces, and gave it to the dog from my hand; then I found an old basin that chanced to be about the camp and fixed the dog a good supper.

After the dog had finished his supper I went to the coat in the corner, spoke gently to Pont, patted the coat, and told him to lay down on the coat. That was the end of that, Pont knew his place and took it without any further trouble.

The next morning when we were about ready to start out on the trap line I asked Pard what he intended to do with Pont. He said that he would tie him to a tree that stood against the shanty close to the door. We were going to take different lines of traps. I said, "What is the harm of Pont's going with me?" "All right, if you want him, I don't want any dog with me." I said, Am, (that was Pard's given name, for short) I don't believe the dog wants to go with you any more than you want him to. Am's reply was that he guessed he would go all right if he wanted him. I said, Am, just for shucks, say nothing to the dog and see which one he will follow. So we stepped outside the shack and the dog stood close to me.

I said, "Go on Am, and we will see who the dog will follow." He started off and the dog only looked at him. Am stopped and told the dog to come on. The dog got around behind me.

Am said, "If I wanted you to come, you would come or I would break your neck." I said, "No, Am, you won't break Pont's neck while I am around; it would not look nice."

I started on my way, Pont following after I had gone a little ways. I spoke to Pont, patting him on the head and told him what a good dog he was. He jumped about and showed more ways than one how pleased he was, and from that day until we broke camp, Pont stayed with me. He showed plainly the disgust he had for his master.

It so happened that the first trap I came to was a trap set in a spring run, and it had a 'coon in it. I allowed Pont to help kill the 'coon, and after the 'coon was dead, I patted Pont and told him what great things he had done in capturing the 'coon. Pont showed what pride he took in the hunt, so much so that he did not like to have Am go near the pelt. I saw from the very first day out that all that Pont needed was kind treatment and proper training to make a good help on the trap line.

I was careful to let him know what I was doing when setting a trap, and when he would go to smell at the bait after a trap had been set, I would speak to him in a firm voice and let him know that I did not approve of what he was doing. When making blind sets, I took the same pains to show and give him to understand what I was doing. I would sometimes, after giving him fair warning, let him put his foot into a trap. I would scold him in a moderate manner and release him. Then all the time I was resetting the trap I would talk trap to him, and by action and word teach him the nature of the trap. Mr. Trapper, please do not persuade yourself to believe that the intelligent dog cannot understand if you go about it right.

In two weeks Pont had advanced so far in his training that I no longer had to pay any attention to him on account of the traps. The third day Pont was with me he found a 'coon that had escaped with a trap nearly two weeks before. My route called me up a little draw from the main stream. I had not gone far up this when Pont took the trail of some animal and began working it up the side of the hill. I stood and watched him until the trail took him to an old log, when Pont began to sniff at a hole in the log. He soon raised his head and gave a long howl, as much as to say he is here and I want help. After running a stick in the hole I soon discovered that the log was hollow. I took my belt axe and pounded along on the log until I thought I was at the right point and then chopped a hole in the log, and as good luck would have it, I made the opening right on to the 'coon, and almost the first thing I saw on looking into the log was the trap. Pont soon had the 'coon out, and when I saw it was the 'coon that had escaped with our trap, I gave Pont praise for what he had done, petting him and telling him of his good deed, and he seemed to understand it all.

Not long after this Am came into camp at night and reported that a fox had broken the chain on a certain trap and gone off with the trap, saying that he would take Pont in the morning and see if he could find the fox. In the morning when we were ready to go Am tried to have Pont follow him, but it was no go, Pont would not go with him. Then Am put a rope on to him and tried to lead him, but Pont would sulk and would not be led. Then Am lost his temper and wanted to break Pont's neck again. I said that I did not like to have Pont abused and that I would go along with him. When we came to the place where the fox had escaped with the trap Am at once began to slap his hands and hiss Pont on. Pont only crouched behind me for protection. I persuaded Am to go on down the run and look at the traps down that way while I and Pont would look after the escaped fox.

As soon as Am was gone I began to look about where the fox had been caught and search for his trail, and soon Pont began to wag his tail. I merely worked Pont's way and said, "Has he gone that way?" Pont gave me to understand that the fox had gone that way and that he knew what was wanted. The trail soon left the main hollow and took up a little draft. A little way up this we found where the fox had been fast in some bushes but had freed himself and left and gone up the hillside. Pont soon began to get uneasy, and when I said hunt him out Pont, away he went and in a few minutes I heard Pont give a long howl and I knew that he had holed his game. When I came up to Pont he was working in a hole in some shell rocks. I pulled away some loose rocks and could see the fox, and we soon had him out, and Pont seemed more pleased over the hunt than I was. There was scarcely a week that Pont did not help us out on the trap line.

Not unfrequently did Pont show me a 'coon den. I had some difficulty in teaching Pont to let the porcupines alone, but after a time he learned that they were not the kind of game that he wanted, and he paid no more attention to them.

I have had many different dogs on the trap line with me, and I can say to any one who can understand dog's language, has a liking for a dog and has a reasonable amount of patience and is willing to use it, will find a well trained dog of much benefit on the trap line, and often a more genial companion than some partners one may fall in with. But if one is so constituted that he must give his dog a growl or a kick every time he comes in reach, and perhaps only give his dog half enough to eat and cannot treat a dog as a friend, then I say, leave the dog off the trap line.

DogTreasures.com

For those who are interested in canine history, book, photographs, and collectables, I recommend >> DogTreasures.com

I met the owner, Leonard Brook, at an antique sale in Middleburg, Virginia a while back, and it turns out he bought out the entire dog library of one Francis P. Fretwell who, did indeed, have quite a collection!

Mr. Brook does indeed have some hard to get books and the prices are fair enough. Mr. Brook is also a pretty nice and interesting fellow; he used to train dogs for the stage in New York. Check out his site!

Happy Birthday William Shakespeare!

My father said a man could almost pass for educated provided he knew the Bible and had read all of William Shakespeare.

Needless to say, I promptly read the Bible and all of William Shakespeare!

So what do the Bible and Shakespeare have in common?

Among other things, a general contempt and dislike of dogs!

Perhaps this is not too surprising, as dogs carried rabies in ancient times, and were most commonly seen as semi-feral beasts scouring the edges of cities, dumps and waste lands.

Shakespeare mentions dogs 151 times in his plays and sonnets, but only one lap dog appears as a character -- Crab in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

So what is Shakespeare saying about dogs the rest of the time?

Mostly he is comparing dogs to people (with both suffering as a result).

We do find Shakespeare giving the nod to the beginnings of dog classification, however. In Macbeth he writes:

Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;
As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are 'clept
All by the name of dogs: the valued file
Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
The housekeeper, the hunter, every one
According to the gift which bounteous nature
Hath in him closed.

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The End of Publishing

The book, above, is a limited edition (1,000 copies printed) edition of the Rev. John Russell's memoirs, written by E.W.L. Davies and printed in 1902, complete with illustrations by N.H.J. Baird, and "coloured by hand."

The cover is embossed in gold.

I brought it along with me to coffee this morning. I took the picture and loaded it from my laptop at Starbucks.

On the way over, National Public Radio had a story about a fellow who won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, which was turned down by multiple publishers before it was published by Bellevue Literary Press, which is run out of a couple of rooms at Bellevue Hospital (yes, the place with the nut ward), in New York City.

It seems every other publisher had turned It down. Not commercial enough. The folks at Bellevue thought that was crazy talk. How ironic!

77=88

Last night I stopped at Barnes and Noble to drink more Starbucks coffee and cruise the racks. I got two paperback novels, but not before stopping at the desk of the guy selling the Barnes and Noble version of an e-book reader.

Barnes and Noble is selling e-book readers.

Clearly, you do not need to be a genius to see that paper publishing is not long for this world.

Ten years, tops.

I already get my newspaper from my cell phone and my computer.

And with e-book readers, who needs book stores?

Certainly no writer needs a publisher skimming off $19 out of every $20.

In the Next Economy, books will cost $10, the author will get $9, and the file-sharing site will get a dollar. There will be no publisher at all.

And there will be no loss.

Publishers never sold books anyway; they placed them in stores. In the era of Amazon, book stores are going broke faster than tobacco shops in the 1990s.

Anyone can see the Next Economy is already here.

Look at music. Who goes to record stores anymore? You order online and get your recommendations online, and the music is downloaded to your computer, or your I-pod. No more skipping songs, cascading CDs, and ripped audio tape.

How about movies? First there was video tape, and then cable TV, and now NetFlix. Next will be "online all the time, and on demand."

Some folks already have it.

Books are clearly next.

The market for e-book readers is exploding. In a world in which cheap paperback novels cost $15, the demand for a $150 reader will not be contained for long.

Of course, every new technology has its ups and down. A shakeout in e-book readers has yet to occur; the wave of inflated expectations is still building.



But how deep will the "trough of disillusionment" really be?

Not very, I think.

The current I-Pad is not the machine that will win the race, but the next generation along this same curve will probably be the tipping point.

It's not like an e-reader has to do a lot to beat a paper book.

For one thing, a million great books are already out there for FREE (including the book featured at the top of this post).

E-books do not rot, mold, crowd shelves, or cost a fortune to move across town.

Plus they are cheaper than their paper equivalents; a lot cheaper over time.

And what will e-books do for publishers and book stores?

The fellow at Barnes and Noble selling e-book readers tried to make the case that publishers and books stores will still exist in the future. His thesis: that consumers need publishers and book stores to tell us, the consumer, what to read.

I call bullshit.

In the Next Economy we will not need priests to tell us what to read.

Book titles will be loaded directly up to file servers, the same as i-Tunes.

Consumers themselves will rank them up or down. Blogs and social marketing sites will tell niche communities what's hot and what's not.

Of course, the real choke point will always remain.

Very few people can write well.

Even fewer people have something to say.

Even fewer have something new to say.

Even fewer can leap the hurdles of production; the unending hunt for typos, the sanding of sentences, and the tyranny of pagination.

But paper, printing and publishing priests?

In ten years, we will look back on them as an anachronism, right up there with snail mail and the fax.

Listen up children, when I was a kid, we had printed books. On paper. Can you imagine?
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FREE Books, Books, Books

In the sidebar to this blog, I've loaded up links to a number of old books which are now available, online, as either PDFs, flip books or text. In most case, the link will take you to examples of all three versions.

Book are arranged, rather roughly by type, and chronologically within type. If a book is out of chronological order, it means that the print version is a later print version of an earlier text.

• Dogs & Field Sports:
  4The Dog and the Sportsman (1845)
  4The Sportsman's Directory (1845)
  4The Amateur Poacher (1881)
  4Studies in the Art of Rat-catching (1896)
  4The Confessions of a Poacher (1890)
  4The Sporting Dog (1904)
  4Hunting Dogs (1909)
  
  
• General Dog:
  4The Illustrated Book of the Dog (1881)
  4A History and Description of the Modern Dogs (1877)
  4British Dogs; Their Varieties, History, Characteristics (1879)
  
  
• Terriers:
  4The Out-of-door Life of the Rev. John Russell (1883)
  4The Dandie Dinmont Terrier: Its History (1885)
  4The Scottish Terrier and the Irish Terrier (1894)
  4A History and Description of the Fox Terrier (1895)
  
  
• Fox Hunting:
  4Thoughts Upon Hare and Fox Hunting (1796)
  4Observations on Fox-hunting (1826)
  4Notitia Venatica: A Treatise on Fox-hunting (1847)
  4Hunting by the Duke of Beaufort (1885)
  4Hunting by Lord Frederick North (1900)
  4Fifty Years' Fox-hunting with the Grafton (1900)
  4Fox Hunting in the Shires (1903)
  4With Hound and Terrier in the Field (1904)
  4Hunting the Fox (1921)
  4Hunting in Many Countries (1922)
  
  
• Wildlife:
  4The Badger; a Monograph (1898)
  4Wild life at the Land's End (1904)
  4Fact Against Fiction (1874)
  4Creatures of the Night (1905)
  4Bush Wanderings of a Naturalist (1861)
  
  
• Veterinary and Breeding:
  4A Treatise on Canine Madness (1760)
  4Canine Pathology (1824)
  4The Dog, in Health and Disease (by Walsh, 1859)
  4The Encyclopedia of the Kennel (1913 print)
  4The Dogs of Great Britain and America (1914 print)
  4The Horse and Dog As They Should Be (1882)
  4The American Book of the Dog (1891)
  4The Dog in Health and in Disease (by Mills, 1895)
  4The New Book of the Dog (1907)
  4The Gentleman's Dog (1909)
  
  
• Dog Training:
  4Dog Breaking (1865)
  4Practical Dog Training or Training vs. Breaking (1882)
  
  
• Story:
  4ABC of Fox Hunting (1870)
  4The Autobiography of an English Gamekeeper (1892)
  4Among the Night People (1902)
  4Hoof Beats from Virginia & Other Lands (1912)
  4Jock of the Bushveld (1922)
  
  
• General Animal Health and Breeding:
  4Inbreeding and Outbreeding (1919)
  4Heredity in Relation to Evolution and Animal Breeding (1911)
  4Animal Breeding (1901)
  
  
• Kennel Club Stud Books
  4The Kennel Club Calendar and Stud Book (UK, 1884 )
  4The American Kennel Club Stud Book (1889)
  
  
• Falconry & Hawking & Pigeons:
  4The Boke of Saint Albans (1420?)
  4Bert's Treatise of Hawks and Hawking (1619)
  4Observations Upon Hawking (1826)
  4Coursing and Falconry (1899)
  4Falconry: Its Claims, History, and Practice
  4Pigeons (1845)
  4Pigeons and All About Them (1898)
  4Fancy Pigeons: Breeding and Management (1887)
  ..

Tales of Terriers Too Big

I have been doing a LOT of reading of old books and have come away with one general observation: Mounted fox hunting does not have much to do with terrier work!

A 50-year history of the Grafton Hunt (published in 1900) mentions a terrier only once, and just in passing!

So what is this book about? People long dead, that no one cared about even when they were alive!

A close reading of dozens of other books on mounted fox hunting finds little mention of either terriers or hounds and, as a group, they can all be flushed with few exceptions. I will talk about the exceptions in later posts.

For now, let me mention one book, written in 1826, and entitled "Observations on Fox-hunting and the Management of Hounds in the Kennel and the Field, Addressed to Young Sportsman, about to Undertake a Hunting Establishment." Here we find two short tales of terriers.

With regard to the use of Terriers in the field; — they are no doubt sometimes of service, particularly when Foxes use drains, but if they are not perfectly steady, they will do a great deal of mischief. They should invariably be entered with the young hounds, and always be kept in the kennel.

As a matter of curiosity, I here give you an instance or two of the extraordinary length of time terriers will exist without food; one occurred the other day. I was staying at a friend's house in Hertfordshire, who had lost a favourite terrier seven days: on going out to look at his sporting dogs near the house, he thought he heard the voice of his lost dog. He recollected the last time it was seen was near the mouth of a drain, upwards of two hundred yards from the spot from whence the sound came. He immediately ordered his workmen to open the drain, and they found the terrier jammed in a narrow part of it ; the animal appeared lively, and not the worse for her long fasting, except being a little reduced in flesh, and the next day very lethargic.

I heard at the same time a still more extraordinary instance of a terrier remaining in an earth for twenty days, and I dare venture to vouch for the truth of it. The Hatfield hounds had run a Fox to ground, and the terrier followed it in. They dug many hours without coming up to the fox or the dog ; and at last were obliged to give it up as a hopeless job. The terrier was the property of old Joe, the then whipper-in, and a great favourite. He therefore had the earth watched, and on the twentieth day the dog crawled out a mere skeleton, but with proper attention was recovered.

A small observation: The use of over-large terriers has been normalized in the U.K. by the presence of many land drains and the large number of badger earths which a fox can use to get to ground.

An over-larger terrier in a branching drain system, of course, is a problem, as a fox with a 14" chest span can slide into a 9" pipe with ease, and then quite easily slide down a 6" pipe that branches off it.

The too-large terrier, of course, will be fine in a 9" drain, but in the 6" inch drain into which the fox has entered, things are going to be very tight, and for the terrier getting stuck is very likely.

Today, of course, we have electronic terrier locator collars, but in 1824 there was no such thing. The best you could do was drive a bar into the ground, put a cup to the bar, and listen. If the dog was 20 feet away and still shallow, you might get a read, but if it was 40 yards away, and running deep, you were out of luck, and so was the dog.

For more on the problems that come with over-reliance on large drains and artificial earths, see Out of the Ring and Into the Den and Artificial Dens, Big Dogs and Fair Chase.

• Other Related Posts:** "Strong Dog" Trials: Where Fancy Leads to Fantasy
  ** The First Visual Go-to-Ground Set Up?
  ** A Quick History of American Terrier Work
  ** Artificial Earths Go Pre-Fab
  ** Danish Earthdog Setup
  ** The Architecture of Burrows
  ** The Measured Size of Red Fox
  ** Measurement Informs, Exaggeration Deforms
  ** Fox Size Around the World
  ** Terrier Go-to-Ground 101
  ** Cracking Tired Chestnuts About Form and Function
  ** The Archeology of Hunting
  ** EarthDogs in Spain
  ** Form for Function: Span Quarry, Not Just Dogs

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