Every Dog Has Its Day

From loyal labradors to a fishing-mad orange dog, a plucky teckel and a food-thieving lurcher, our favourite sporting canine accomplices are trusted and loved beyond measure, finds Adrian Dangar

- Adrian Dangar

OUR reputation as a nation of dog lovers has grown in tandem with the evolution of field sports in the British countryside, our favourite hounds and sporting dogs celebrated through the ages in art and literature. Some 270 years after Gainsborough’s famous painting of Robert Andrews with his wife and gundog, prominent field sportsmen and women continue to enjoy close bonds with working canine companions that, just as Andrews’s dog was, are often cherished members of the family.

Those who work dogs in the field seem to enjoy a closer, sometimes telepathic relationship with their charges that’s obvious if you know what to look for. A good huntsman’s rapport with his pack—the ‘golden thread’ —is much admired, but so are the feats of gundogs indispensable to every day’s shooting. On formal days, it often seems as if the pickers-up are the ones having the most fun.

Dogless fishing would be unthinkable for others. No one is suggesting Fido can increase the bag (although the 8th Earl Home’s Newfoundland caught up to 20 salmon a day on the River Tweed in about 1730), but, for anglers, it’s about sharing the occasion with an inseparable and faithful companion.

The ancestry of many foxhounds can be traced back more than 200 years and gundog breeds are registered with the Kennel Club, but equally successful in the field is an army of Heinz 57 varieties of pedigree unknown.

That’s certainly the case for Marina Gibson, a passionate angler and freelance guide, who recently founded the Northern Fishing School (www.northernfishingschool. com) on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. Her constant companion on the riverbank is a small orange dog called Sedge, who has a tiny white tag to his tail that’s so vulpine in appearance, it’s easy to imagine the ‘30% unknown’ in his DNA could be fox.