The dog was whelped in 1832 and presented by Mr. Portman to his owner.
From this dog is descended the field trial winner, Col. C. J. Cotes’
Pitchford Marshal, and his Monk, an intermediate generation. This
dog is more like the dogs at Netherby 45 years ago than is the
present race of Labradors.
]
[Illustration:
COL. C. J. COTES’ PITCHFORD MARSHAL. SEVERAL TIMES A FIELD TRIAL
WINNER
]
[Illustration:
COL. C. J. COTES’ MONK. AN INTERMEDIATE LINK BETWEEN THE IMPORTED DOG
TIP, OF 1832, AND MARSHAL. NOW IN FULL VIGOUR. MONK IS SAID TO HAVE
BEEN VERY FAST
]
In America they do not use retrievers, because they can make all their
pointers and setters retrieve, and they must have some of the index dogs
or they get no sport, so that they will not keep two dogs to do the work
of one.
In England there are three sorts of retrievers, and crosses between
each, besides Labradors and spaniels. These three are the flat-coated
variety, the curly-coated sort, and the Norfolk retriever, with its open
curl or wave of coat. The author believes that the curly-coated show dog
is now useless, that the Norfolk dog has gone off in looks, and that the
flat-coated retriever is open to regeneration when he is bred more wiry
and less lumbering. Besides this, many of the breed are short of courage
to face thorns, and slack to hunt also. Gamekeepers say that the highest
trial of a retriever’s ability and pluck comes at the pick-up the day
after a big shoot. Especially is this so on grouse moors, where no
ground game or living creatures of any kind are to be found around the
butts, and where probably not a gun is fired during the whole hunt for
yesterday’s lost dead. The author has never seen this phase of retriever
work; but he believes there are very few dogs that could not get enough
of that kind of thing, and that the absence of sport and the search for
cold meat might make the best dogs inclined to “look back” for orders.
On the other hand, grouse collecting after a drive is just finished is
the easiest of all the work the retriever is called upon to perform, for
except where there are peat hags or open drains a grouse with a broken
wing will not run very far. In one sense retriever work is more
difficult than it used to be when game was walked up, for the necessity
for remaining quite still until a drive is over, whether the game be
grouse, partridges, or pheasants, often gives the wounded a twenty
minutes’ start. Consequently, it is likely enough to get clean out of
the range of a retriever by the time he is started. It is all very well
to say that he should get upon the foot scent and stick to it; so he
should, and probably would much oftener than he does, but for the fact
that there is around the fall of the wounded in all directions the scent
of other dead and wounded birds. What is often asked of a retriever,
then, is to neglect the strongest and freshest scents and to try for the
weakest and oldest. In order to get this work well done, a retriever
should be willing to range wide, outside the radius of the dead birds,
so as to find either the body scent of the crouching wounded bird or its
foot scent after it had got clear of the floating scent of the many dead
which fouls the ground long after the fowls have all been removed from
it. But the misfortune is that a high ranging retriever is not always
willing to hunt close for dead birds and those that have not moved far.
However, this can be taught; whereas there are many fair retrievers for
close hunting that could not be taught to hunt wide for a moving
“runner,” for the reason that they have not the necessary pluck.
A great deal of difference of opinion exists as to whether a retriever
should carry a high or a low head. But there is no doubt that a good dog
must do both as occasion requires. Many times has the author seen a
high-headed retriever find the fall of a wounded bird 60 yards away, go
straight to the place, glue his nose to the line, and never look up
until the bird fluttered up in his path. But even this low nose on the
foot scent is not invariably desirable, and the same retriever that at
one time worms out a line down wind will often run like a foxhound, head
up and stern down, when the direction is up wind, or even side wind. The
higher the dog carries his head the faster he will go, and consequently
the sooner he will come up with his game, so that to insist on
retrievers carrying a low nose, even in roding game, is to insist on
mediocrity. Every retriever should put his nose down as soon as he has
satisfied himself that he cannot do the work with a high head. Of course
a retriever cannot find even a fresh-shot bird if a man is standing over
it, and as the habit is for shooters and beaters to go and “help” look
for lost game, it follows that retrievers learn to put their heads down,
for they know that unless they ram their noses nearly into the feathers
the scent cannot be detected under such humanising conditions of scent.
It is a good plan to pick up by hand all the game that lies near and
within sight of where the shooters stood before sending the dogs, and
when the dead pick-up is collected, to send the game off down wind of
the place to be hunted, so that the scent of it does not mix with the
similar scent of some long-gone runner. Then if the ground to be hunted
is up wind of where the dead birds were, everything will be in favour of
a dog started from that spot; if, on the contrary, it is to leeward of
the fall of a lot of game, it is well to go still farther down wind with
the retriever, and start him 100 yards or more away from the tainted
ground. Then, after trying around for a trace of foot scent, it is easy
enough to work back if no indications are found. The object is to get
the retriever as quickly as possible on the line of wounded game,
without letting him lose time lifting dead ones or hunting for already
“picked” birds.
In walking up game one of the most difficult things to learn is to take
the far-off bird, and not the easy one, first. By taking the latter with
first barrel the former often becomes impossible, and it is just the
same with retrievers. If you send them off amongst dead game, they must
be allowed to pick it up, although you can see it. A contrary practice
is very useful sometimes, and it is easy to teach a retriever to neglect
the dead for the wounded _always_; but this “higher education” is
extremely awkward in thick cover, like long heather or turnips, where
the quite dead birds are most often lost.
A case in point occurs. Mr. A. T. Williams’ Don of Gerwn won the
retriever trials very comfortably in 1904, when the author was one of
the three judges. There is no doubt that he is very smart on a running
bird in covert, or out, and he knows it, and likes the game amazingly.
But in 1905 he carried his preferences too far; for once, at least, and
probably on several occasions, he found, and made no sign of it when
sent for dead birds, but went on hunting for the runner that was not. He
had been scolded off dead birds, and thus, on one occasion, he was seen
by a spectator to turn over the dead wing of the only bird down and go
on hunting, as if his master only wanted his services for the lively
runner. As the judges did not see this performance, Don had the
discredit of having his eye wiped on very easy birds twice. Probably if
they had known all about it, there would have been no other course open
to them; for, after all, the “higher education” must stop short at
teaching the neglect of retrieving to the retriever.
It is a great but not uncommon mistake to confuse bustle and excitement
with courage and love of hunting. No dog should have less excitement or
more courage than the retriever. Excitement is so easily recognised that
little need be said of it, except that it is probably a near relative of
nerves, and a retriever should appear to have no nerves and no
excitement. He should be able to stand still, to lie still, or to sit
still, in the presence of any quantity of wounded or dead ground game or
winged birds. The standing still is the most difficult of the three. At
the same time, the more interest a retriever takes in all that is going
on the better he is sure to be, provided he is not excitable. Probably
no dog takes more interest than a pointer, standing like a statue and
dropping as the game rises. He may be excited as he does this, but the
majority are not, and a retriever should be no more so. The pointer
watches the game go away, but as he does so he sinks to the earth, and
the retriever may be just as interested without jumping about or jerking
his head in all directions in turn. A good retriever appears to be
thinking, and when a dog is noticed to take his gaze off the bird he has
been watching at every new arrival, or new fall, of game, he usually has
not much stability. He is sure to turn out flighty, and that is a very
bad quality—the outcome of excitement. The determination to hunt can
exist without any excitement, can grow on what it feeds on, and does not
require the assistance of blood to increase it. This is a very important
thing to know, because an old idea was that setters and pointers must be
allowed to chase game to give them a love of hunting. Some of them may
require it; others will increase their love of hunting every time they
go out, although they have never been allowed to chase, and in spite of
the fact that in the spring no game has ever been killed over them. Some
retrievers have had this love of hunting also; but a great many, on the
contrary, seem to depend on the excitement they get for the will to
hunt. The latter are the most difficult to break, and the least valuable
when they are broken.
[Illustration:
MR. A. T. WILLIAMS AND HIS CELEBRATED LIVER-COLOURED FIELD TRIAL
RETRIEVER DON OF GERWN
]
[Illustration:
MR. A. T. WILLIAMS’ DON OF GERWN (LIVER-COLOURED)
]
[Illustration:
MR. LEWIS WIGAN’S SWEEP OF GLENDARUEL (BLACK)
]
The qualities that must be hereditary in retrievers are that one just
described—soft mouth, and to some extent “nose.” The last-named is not
as certainly hereditary as the others, although it is quite as
important. The author is not prepared to maintain that an excitable
retriever having these last-mentioned qualities is always a bad one, or
that excitement cannot be used as a substitute for natural love of
hunting in the breaking of a retriever, but this process is intended to
restrain excitement, so that the simultaneous encouragement of it makes
the task a conflict of intention.
It is said that the business of catching wounded game makes a retriever
more apt to run in than a pointer or setter, but the author has had
several good retrieving setters that did not run in, so that the
difference in breaking is much more likely to arise from temperament
than from duties.
It is very easy to make retrievers steady to heel. For this purpose some
people keep cut-wing pheasants for them to retrieve, and Belgian hare
rabbits for them to look at. The lessons are useful, but whether use
does not breed contempt is doubtful. The author would expect a dog
trained to retrieve tame pheasants to become careless, and one that
constantly saw Belgian hare rabbits to be well behaved until temptation
arose. Retrievers that have sense often get very cunning: one the author
had did not start to run in until he was five years old, and then he did
it deliberately, and _not_ from excitement. The proof was that he would
not move unless he saw a hare was hit, then he went instantly, and would
take his whipping as if, deserving it, he did not mind.
What do dogs think of us when we restrain them from catching the very
things we go out to catch? More proof was forthcoming that it was
determination and not excitement that made this old dog run in. When a
cord was put on him, he would not move under similar circumstances. He
was eventually cured, but it was a tough job, and was not done by cord
or whipcord.
Forty years ago the curly-coated dogs were the best workers, and one
could make sure of getting good dogs regularly. For instance, about that
time the author bought a brace of curly puppies from Mr. Gorse, of
Radcliffe-on-Trent, then the most noted exhibitor of show dogs. Both
took to work naturally and quickly, and could in their first season be
trusted to get runners in turnip-fields of 100 acres each. Ten years
later, the author bought one of the late Mr. Shirley’s flat-coated heavy
sort, but, although no trouble to break, it was heavy in mind and body.
Mr. Shirley entered the own brother of this dog at the field trials at
Sleaford; there was no other competitor for the prize. Had there been
another entry, it is impossible that Mr. Shirley could have won, for a
more lumbering and clumsy performance was never seen, although the task
set was only that of picking up a dead bird and not a runner. But Mr.
Shirley improved the next generation considerably. He had a very
handsome dog to which the author was anxious to raise some puppies. With
this object in view, an exchange was made for a defeated bitch called
Jenny, then belonging to Mr. Gorse, before mentioned. He took a second
prize Birmingham winner of the author’s breeding in exchange. But Mr.
Shirley objected to the breeding programme, so that another course had
to be adopted, and Jenny raised some first-rate working dogs. Then she
was disposed of by the author to the late Mr. Shirley, and by him bred
to the dog which had been denied to her when the author’s property. Her
name was changed from “Jenny” to “Wisdom,” and she became the founder of
the Wiseacre family of show retrievers. She presented them with those
long heads physically that some people declare are far from “long”
figuratively. Wisdom, or Jenny, herself was certainly a fool, and the
origin of her long and narrow refined head was probably what is known as
a “sport,” for it was not to be seen on any other retriever of that
time. However, she had a good nose and a tender mouth, and is important
because probably all the show flat-coated dogs are descended from her.
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.