Doubtless in earlier days, when the art of training was less thoroughly understood, the breaking of a dog was a matter of infinite trouble to breeders.  Most of the gun dogs could be taught by patience and practice to retrieve fur or feather, but game carefully and skilfully shot is easily rendered valueless by being mumbled and mauled by powerful jaws not schooled to gentleness.  And this question of a tender mouth was certainly one of the problems that perturbed the minds of the originators of the breed.  The difficulty was overcome by process of selection, and by the exclusion from breeding operations of all hard-mouthed specimens, with the happy effect that in the present time it is exceptional to find a working Retriever who does not know how to bring his bird to hand without injuring it.  A better knowledge of what is expected of him distinguishes our modern Retriever.  He knows his duty, and is intensely eager to perform it, but he no longer rushes off unbidden at the firing of the gun.  He has learned to remain at heel until he is ordered by word or gesture from his master, upon whom he relies as his friend and director.

It would be idle to expect that the offspring of unbroken sire and dam can be as easily educated as a Retriever whose parents before him have been properly trained.  Inherited qualities count for a great deal in the adaptability of all sporting dogs, and the reason why one meets with so many Retrievers that are incapable or disobedient or gun-shy is simply that their preliminary education has been neglected—­the education which should begin when the dog is very young.

In his earliest youth he should be trained to prompt obedience to a given word or a wave of the hand.  It is well to teach him very early to enter water, or he may be found wanting when you require him to fetch a bird from river or lake.  Lessons in retrieving ought to be a part of his daily routine.  Equally necessary is it to break him in to the knowledge that sheep and lambs are not game to be chased, and that rabbits and hares are to be discriminated from feathered game.

Gun-shyness is often supposed to be hereditary; but it is not so.  Any puppy can be cured of gun-shyness in half a dozen short lessons.  Sir Henry Smith’s advice is to get your puppy accustomed to the sound and sight of a gun being fired, first at a distance and gradually nearer and nearer, until he knows that no harm will come to him.  Companionship and sympathy between dog and master is the beginning and end of the whole business, and there is a moral obligation between them which ought never to be strained.

Both as a worker and as a show dog the flat-coated Retriever has reached something very near to the ideal standard of perfection which has been consistently bred up to.  Careful selection and systematic breeding, backed up by enthusiasm, have resulted in the production of a dog combining useful working qualities with the highest degree of beauty.