Continent-crossing canine expats

Some ‘native’ dog breeds are now more popular abroad than at home — but at least it’s a two-way exchange, says Jeremy Hobson

- Jeremy Hobson

Given its name, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the English pointer — that quintessentially British ‘bird dog’ portrayed so often in old sporting paintings in manor houses — is as much a product of UK soil as an oak tree. And it has its roots just as firmly entrenched.

However, while some of its blood might seep, sap-like, from early English hunting dogs, it is very much a product of imported dogs from the Continent and, in particular, Spain.

Colonel David Hancock, author, writer and dog historian, quotes Gaston Phoebus, the famous Comte de Foix who, at the end of the 14th century, wrote: “And as one talks of a greyhound of Britain, the… bird dogs come from Spain.” From that and other sources, Col Hancock concludes that once “Spain was producing the best bird dogs and dominating the European market…”

Popularity tends to be fickle. In the Daily Telegraph on 16 November 2019, Patrick Sawer reported: “Britain’s dog owners have fallen out of love with the English pointer — so much so that dog welfare groups fear it could even become extinct.”

His comment may be true; English pointers and setters are perhaps more widely appreciated abroad than they are here — yet continental hunt, point and retrieve (HPR) breeds such as the German wirehaired pointer are increasingly more popular in the UK as working dogs. It’s a strange two-way trade.

Imported spaniels

Politicians and business gurus might talk of ‘import’ and ‘export’. As with the question of why the HPR breeds have possibly knocked the English pointer from its pedestal, there’s another one to pose. Why, when we have the English, Welsh, Sussex, Clumber and cocker spaniels, have UK sportsmen felt the need to import and work the likes of the Brittany spaniel, for example?