The Bourbon News

Corrupting The Dog.

We saw a proud dog the other day. He was all dolled up with a blanket and his hair was all fluffy and he had on a large brass collar. He was seated on the front seat of a big blue car, and no ebony-hued coachman in green livery, with a seven-foot whip, ever pointed his prideful nose higher than did this dog. For this dog was an Irish setter.

Now this dog really belonged out in the fields, or will when the hunting season opens up, trailing along after his master. He belongs in the brush thickets, getting his hide full of burs and his mouth full of feathers. That dog was created to smell out game birds, to rout them out from cover, and to go gather them from thicket and ravine, when the old twelve-gauge bangs its right and left barrels.

In his rightful place that dog would be the finest object that deigns to associate with man. All dressed up, squatted on a velvet-covered red seat he is nothing but a sham, a waste of good dog flesh and sense.

But you know the day of the game dog is about gone. There is very little game in the old sense of the word in this county. A few years ago almost every Bourbon county sportsman had his setter, his pointer, or his water spaniel. And the love and understanding between these men and their dogs was a thing beautiful to see.

But the closed season is on: the private preserve has most of the game that is left: the average man has very little use for a bird dog, and in a few years the few pointers and setters that you will see will be house pets, a sort of poodle, toy dogs. Which is an awful fate for any worthwhile dog!