He was a bird dog, and was never allowed to carry anything hard in his mouth, because it would make him hard-mouthed, and he would be apt to bite the birds when he was bringing them back to any person who was shooting with him.

"Piers, if I'm a prying cat, you're a hard-mouthed mule!

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.

His detractors often accuse him of being hard-mouthed, but this charge is not well founded.

You'd like to get the price of a decent animal out of me for that broken-kneed hard-mouthed brute of yours," replied the stranger with a scornful laugh.

Then several German connoisseurs follow in their peculiar script, with comments worded heavily with hard-mouthed consonants.