The Complete English Wing Shot

by George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell

[Since the above was written, the 1906 retriever trials have passed, but as the winners all failed with runners the author finds nothing to add to his general survey.]

SPANIELS

The chief of the spaniels are the setters, but as they no longer claim connection at one end of the group, and as the King Charles and Blenheim spaniels are no longer granted the status of gun-dogs at the other extremity of it, the number of breeds is limited in fact, but unduly enlarged by Stud Book classification.

The only sporting breeds in reality, although there are more nominally, are the Irish water spaniel, used as a retriever, the English water spaniel, or half-breds of that almost extinct race, of which the curly retriever is a survival, but with a cross; the clumber, the English springer, the Welsh springer, and the cocker. Field and Sussex spaniels seem to have gone off in work, although they are said to have come on in appearance. There was an outcry that the show field spaniels were bred out of true proportion, and there were reports of the same dogs being observed in two different parishes at the same time. The drain-pipe order of body is not quite as exaggerated as it was before the reformation that occurred about 1898, but the black field spaniels and the Sussex dogs of the shows even now tend to a Dachshund formation. Still, the former are as handsome as dogs can be, and are in every sense spaniels to look at, although mostly too long and heavy for work, and suggesting hound cross by the high angle at which they carry their sterns. The truest bred spaniels when at work carry the stern at an angle of about 45 degrees with the earth, pointing downwards, and not much higher in kennel; but the majority of show spaniels carry the stern above the level of the back, and consequently suggest hound blood. Besides this fault, they have others from the shooter’s point of view. Their ears are too long, and they could not work in the feather they constantly carry. It is strange that the form of these spaniels should have been so grotesquely altered by selection for exhibition, and yet the old formations of clumbers, springers, and cockers have remained very much what they always have been. This is the more surprising, having regard to the fact that Sussex, black field, and cocker spaniels are now much of the same blood. The real cockers, which were at one time called King Charles spaniels, have become lap-dogs, and the smaller specimens of the other races have taken their places. And yet some cockers are distinctly the right shape and not too long, whereas the other exhibition races, named above as too long, are less workmen than the cockers although so much bigger.

The black field spaniels appeal to me as dogs. The refinement of their heads and the beauty of their coats go nearer to a success by man in producing a working race by mental design and physical measurement than specimens of any other show dogs, whereas the short heads of the modern Sussex spaniel look to contain no sense, and the work seen at field trials must have been very disappointing to the owners of both kinds. It has been a puzzle to the author how men who use the gun at all can be satisfied with such work. However, people will often sacrifice sport for a hobby.

At a period when science assents to the possibility, although not the probability, of raising up a pure breed in spite of the introduction of a cross of blood, and when the Irish wolfhound has been created out of crosses with the German boarhound and the Scotch deerhound, it is not wonderful that a faint trace of Sussex spaniel blood in a pedigree is considered enough to warrant inclusion under that heading in the Stud Book. But really it is not known what the original Sussex spaniels were like. It does not follow that because all that is known is gathered from Rosehill, that the dogs there were of the old Sussex strain, or that the information given about them was reliable.

It is not of much importance to sportsmen in any case, except that it has a bearing on the whole ancestry of the spaniel. So far as the author knows, whole-coloured liver, according to the records, is not a spaniel colour at all. On the other hand, whole colours were very much appreciated as long ago as 1776, but we do not hear of any except black-and-tan and red dogs—that is, of the colour of a “bright chestnut horse.” This colour is still to be seen in America, where it is the most common in work, but the author has only heard of it, and never seen it in England.

It is only natural to suppose that if spaniels and setters were originally the same dog they were also of the same colour, and we hear of no ancient whole liver-coloured race of either sort. There is little doubt that the latter is a modern creation, and the colour is easily produced. If a liver-and-white dog of any breed is crossed with a whole-coloured one of any sort or colour, some of the produce will generally come whole liver-coloured. Therefore, may we not assume that the first liver-coloured setters and spaniels were produced by crossing the black-and-tans or the reds of either breed with the liver-and-white water spaniels? The author has previously stated his belief that colour is greatly indicative of blood. A few years ago there was a race of liver-and-white setters in the North of England, all of which had a top-knot formed of hair longer than the rest, and in one specimen the author noticed a peculiarity distinct from anything noticed in other breeds. It was a ticked liver-and-white in colour, and wherever the hair was of that shade it was also distinctly longer than the white in which it was set, so that the appearance was that of a lot of little tassels.

Spaniels that are liver-and-white colour will generally be found to carry more feather on their ears than any others in the same litters, and many of them have curly feather there, when their differently marked brothers and sisters have straight hair to the ear tips. If it is true, therefore, that colour and hair is indicative of blood, we have to believe in either the pointer or the water spaniel cross wherever liver colour is found in setters or spaniels, although the cross may be several centuries old. Perhaps the best working breed of spaniels now is that liver-and-white race that has been for 100 years in the family of the late Sir Thomas Boughey, once Master of the Albrighton hounds. But more evidence is to be found that the Sussex spaniels were not originally liver-coloured. This is the fact that to the present time those with any Rosehill blood occasionally produce what is called a sandy puppy, which is practically the colour original to the Irish setter, the spaniel as described by the Suffolk Sportsman in 1776, and the spaniel as now found in America.

From the shooter’s standpoint the source of origin does not matter much. But what matters is how the various present-day races or crosses can work.