The Complete English Wing Shot

by George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell

All the public retriever trials in the field have not been failures like that at Sleaford, previously mentioned. But they have only become popular with show men quite recently. The latter have very wisely concluded that if they could not snuff out the trials that so frequently exhibited handsome dogs in a poor light, the next best thing to be done was to capture them. In order to do this, a very large number of entries have been made, and as the stake is necessarily limited (20 was the number), this had the effect of keeping out most outsiders.

Thus at the 1905 trial there were 39 nominations, only 20 of which were accepted, and these were made up of 15 flat-coated dogs, one Norfolk retriever, two Labrador retrievers, and two brown or liver-coloured dogs, one of which, at least, was not of the dog-show strain in most of his removes.

By this plan the show flat-coated breed has come to the extreme front for the first time in the history of the field trials. Probably it will be interesting briefly to enumerate the principal features of retriever trials. Nobody ought to be able to do it better than the author, for he is the only man who has seen them all. The first was a very modest effort attached to the 1870 autumn shooting trials of pointers and setters, held at Vaynol Park, which fine property the late Mr. Assheton-Smith had just before inherited. The following year, at the same trials, there were two stakes for these dogs. The author hunted a puppy which was quite good on wounded partridges, but the very worst possible retriever on a wounded hare. The first thing he was set to do was to get a wounded “squarnog,” as a hare is called in Welsh. Strange to say, on the fine rushy, damp fields of Vaynol, the expected wild-goose chase came off, and the useless hare retriever came back with the spoils of victory. A retriever, possibly belonging to Mr. Lloyd Price, was entered at the same time by the late Mr. Thomas Ellis of Bala, for the aged dog stake, and won very easily. The “Devil” had been obviously named for his looks. He was a curly sandy-brown, with whiskers like an otter hound. His victory reached the ears of the Welsh Church, and caused remonstrance against taking in vain names of potent powers. This had so much effect on the Welsh squire, that the following year he entered a son of the Devil and called it “Country Rector,” possibly thereby avoiding the danger he had been cautioned against. That year it was clear once more that the show beauties were out-classed, and probably that was the reason why, when the Vaynol ground was no longer available, no other trials except the Sleaford failures were instituted for thirty years, or until those of the Retriever Society, which are now held annually. These began about the opening of the new century, and appear likely to see it out. But the first meeting under it was a failure. The winning dog was either very old or very slow, and it was not until the following year that any smart work was seen. This was done by Mr. Abbott’s Rust, whose name explains her colour and appearance; but she did some brilliant work, especially when she was set to wipe the eye of one which appeared to have a good chance until she had failed at a running pheasant, one that gave Rust no trouble whatever ten minutes later, and with so much the worse chance. Rust on that occasion was the only dog present that either by pedigree or reversion went back to the old race of retrievers. This was reminiscent of the “Devil” triumph, and was far from encouraging to the beauty men. The following season Rust was again out, but far too fat and sleek to do herself justice, and she was beaten by the life of idleness she had been leading as a hearth-dog, and also by a very nice black bitch with some white upon it, belonging to the late Mr. Charles Eley, whose son, Mr. C. C. Eley, had taken second with a nice-looking black in Rust’s year. Three Messrs. Eley were in the field for honours in the following years, and by the assistance of Satanella, a bitch without known pedigree, and Sandiway Major (by Wimpole Peter) they headed the working division. Sandiway Major was a triumph for the show pedigree, as his sire was a Champion; but it was noticed that Major was a very distinct reversion to the old wavy-coated sort, for he was quite as much a curly as a flat coated-one. He had been purchased out of one of Mr. George Davies’ annual retriever sales at Aldridge’s, and his work was good although perhaps not brilliant. This was not all that the show men could desire, and the following year another sandy liver-coloured dog, named Mr. A. T. Williams’ Don o Gerwn, easily won first. This dog was a son of that Rust spoken of before, and his sire was a cream-coloured dog of Lord Tweedmouth’s strain—even more of a facer for the believers in exhibition dogs. But on this occasion another son of Wimpole Peter was third, and in 1905 turned the tables on Don of Gerwn. This was a handsome but somewhat slow dog belonging to Colonel Cotes of Pitchford. Don put himself out of court by not condescending to notice dead game, and hunting on the principle of “nothing but runners attended to.” The Pitchford dog is descended from a very old working strain, which first figured in public when one of them appeared in the pages of the Sporting Magazine about the year Queen Victoria came to the throne. But, as a son of Wimpole Peter won the stake, and three sons of Horton Rector were high up in it, the exhibition division has every right to be pleased with its first unalloyed triumph. Mr. Allan Shuter, as the owner of the living Rector, has even more reason to be pleased than Mr. Radcliffe Cooke, as sometime owner of the now dead Peter. But Mr. Shuter’s own entry was not at all what was wanted, for he was too big, too lumbering in body, and not particularly nimble in mind. Mr. Remnant has come near winning first on various occasions, and may be looked upon as a sportsman likely to improve the breed, by the neglect of beauty spots and selection for the fittest, as also very decidedly may be Mr. C. C. Eley, Major Eley his brother, and their cousin, Captain Eley, and Mr. G. R. Davies. Captain Harding, too, in Salop, has the right sort, and his Almington Merlin has had bad luck, or another Wimpole Peter would have come to the front.

That these retriever trials are doing good, in starting breeders who are trying to correct the working faults of the various breeds, is obvious, and with the public spirit exhibited by the late Mr. Assheton-Smith future sportsmen will assuredly associate the names of Mr. B. J. Warwick, Mr. C. C. Eley, and Mr. William Arkwright, not only as founders of the Retriever Society, but also as finders of the game on which the dogs have been tried.

Everybody who is acquainted with the average dogs seen at shooting parties, and has the advantage of ever having seen a really good one, will know how very necessary was some such move as these field trials. It often has been said that all the retrievers could do was to pick up game the men could see. It has become fashionable to demand a no-slip retriever—that is, one that will not run in to retrieve until ordered to do so. Perhaps it has been the readiness with which such dogs have sold that has caused breakers to prefer the slugs, as being the most easily controlled, and the least likely to be returned by purchasers as wild. Whatever has done it, the real game-loving instinct is much weakened since the time when a retriever was a working dog or nothing; but it appears to survive in a modified degree, which may assuredly be strengthened by selection.

It has been previously stated that the waiting until drives are over makes the retrievers work harder than of old, but this does not apply to the hardest of all work—that is, covert shooting; for this has been largely “driving” ever since retrievers were introduced, if it can be said that they ever were introduced. This point is rather doubtful, because the curly retriever is nothing more than an altered edition of the old English water-dog, which variety used to do wildfowler’s duty, with a white leg or two, a white chest and a short tail, which had probably been cut like those of other spaniels. The first retriever the author shot over was entirely of this description, stern and all, except that she was all black, or so nearly whole-coloured that no white upon her can be remembered. This was about 1860, and a son of this “missing link” was particularly smart, and had so good a mouth, that on one occasion, when he annexed a hen sitting on her nest, and carried her half a mile, she was returned to her treasures and sat upon them, none the worse for her involuntary excursion into the next parish. That calls to mind the frequently made statement that it is wrong to give dogs hard things to retrieve. The idea is that it teaches them to bite and to be hard-mouthed. That is an entire mistake, and this dog, like many another, was often made to retrieve stones, and to prove whether he bit them he was occasionally sent back for hen’s eggs, but never broke one.

It is said, too, that the old dogs were lumbering, and so no doubt the Newfoundland type of wavy-coated dogs were, but this hen-and-egg carrier, like his mother, was active enough. He was not steady to heel, but was as sharp as a lurcher, and in cover it was difficult in his presence to miss a rabbit. No wounded one would get to its hole, and a good many that were not wounded were nevertheless retrieved and duly credited to the shooter. Now it is considered a strain on the breaking and a temptation to the mouth of a retriever to trust him with ground game in his first season. Although this particular dog was never broken to stop at heel, such rules, if they existed then, were more honoured by the breach than the keeping, and the dogs were mostly as steady and as soft-mouthed as any now.

The author has used a retriever often with a team of wild spaniels, and constantly with setters and pointers, without any running in of broken dogs, except in the cases already mentioned, and these are the highest trials of the steadiness of retrievers. In hunting a brace of young setters there is obviously no time to argue with a retriever, not even with a shooting-boot, and the author has had no trouble, as a rule, to make his retrievers conspicuous only by their invisibility behind, until they were called upon for action.

One great dog man makes his retrievers “back” when his dogs point. But pointing and setting dogs take no notice, and do not break in, when they are in the habit of looking upon the retriever as a part of the gun. It may be, however, that when black pointers are used a backer might mistake a retriever for a drawing pointer, and be thus led into error; and if so, this is a serious objection to black and black-and-tan index dogs.

The worst cross the author ever made was with Zelstone. Although not a large dog, he was said to be a pure bred Newfoundland. He was a flat-coated retriever Champion, and may have been himself a good worker; but he ruined the working qualities of the descendants of Jenny above mentioned, and brought the author’s strain of them to an end. Consequently, it is suggested that the Newfoundland is the type to breed out of the flat coats.