Art before everything.

It is a grand sight to see a really good setter or pointer
working up to a bird, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to see
if the man with the gun has not lost himself. He throws his whole soul
into his work, questing carefully over the cold scent, feathering eagerly
when the bird is close, and at last drawing up like a statue.
Not Paganini himself ever lost himself in his art more thoroughly than does
humble Spot or Ponto. It is not amusement and not a mere duty to him;
it is a sacred gift, which he is bound to exercise.

A pointer in need of amusement will play with another dog --
the pair pretending to fight, and so on, but when there is work to be done,
the dog is lost in the artist. How crestfallen he looks if by any chance
he blunders on to a bird without pointing it! A fiddler who has played
a wrong note in a solo is the only creature who can look
quite so discomfited. Humanity, instead of going to the ant for wisdom,
should certainly go to the dog.

Sporting dogs are like other artists, in that they are apt to get careless
of everything except their vocation. They are similarly
quite unreliable in their affections. They are not good watch dogs,
and take little interest in chasing cats. They look on a little dog
that catches rats much as a great musician looks on a cricketer --
it's clever, but it isn't Art.

Hunting and fighting dogs are the gladiators of the animal world.
A fox-hound or a kangaroo-dog is always of the same opinion
as Mr. Jorrocks: -- "All time is wasted what isn't spent in 'untin'."