Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/251

 possible, and pleasant, and it will be preferred, especially if the wrong-doing is followed by the reverse experiences.

Dogs are not filthy in their habits, but some people who keep them are, and others do not understand what is required to enable a dog to follow his instincts of cleanliness. Where a dog has once been to respond to Nature's call, he tends to visit again, and this is a guide to enable us to avail of natural instinct to enable us to maintain cleanly surroundings. The same general principles apply when dogs are taken afield to be worked on some sort of game. At first the puppy may run toward almost every form of life he sees. This is natural, and he would not be worth his keeping if he did not show some such tendency to investigate the world about him.



But he must be restrained gradually. He must associate certain acts with the approval and others with the disapproval of him he respects, loves, and wishes greatly to please if he only knows how.

But such is the strength of the impulses of some puppies—now, we will suppose, six or eight months old—that they find it very difficult to restrain themselves. In such case we must lessen the stimulus or source of excitement rather than resort at once to the application of the principle of making the act unpleasant, as the use of a spiked collar or check-line.