The nostalgia craze for English pointers could not have arrived at a better moment than the second half of the nineteenth century. This return to a preference for gun dogs exhibiting this one form of obsessive-compulsive behavior—rather than the others—served a luxury niche market of sportsmen who felt, quite frankly, that things needed to be slowed down a bit. Like-minded types with a taste for expensive hobbies and an abiding sense of their breed-apart status decided to turn back the clock with a sort of boutique bird shooting.
Before maniacal retrievers became the darlings of the filthy rich on both sides of the Atlantic, catatonic pointers had been the signs of superior social standing. “In its traditional form,” recalls that historian of aristocracy’s decline and fall, “shooting had been an integral part of country life. The landowner walked his estate, with a pair of pointers, a muzzle-loaded gun, and a powder of flask, and thought himself lucky if he shot ten birds in a day.”36 In this early version of less is more, pointing dogs were revered not so much for the little they did, but for the direction in which they pointed. It was the odd pause before birds that selective sportsmen found intriguing. Owning a dog with a fine square head, a correct “presentation of the nostrils,”37 and a costly coat—a specimen that struck a handsome pose with ears tilted and tail raised at precisely the right angles toward a bird with superbly symmetrical plumage—meant having a level of taste, discernment, and patience that most men could not afford. Fast shooting was for the “snap shots” and Cockneys. The gentleman engaged in a slower, contemplative, laid-back style of killing because he knew how to savor the moment and take it all in. Pointers were sometimes even slower than they looked. Like the setter that wasn’t there to receive first prize, this “strange-behaving dog,” as Ash called the pointer, was notorious for running off and disappearing for hours, sometimes never returning to assume the position.38
Considering how erratic and high-strung pointers often were, the gentleman hunter was lucky to shoot any birds at all. From their early use as gun dogs, pointers were so fragile and tightly wound that they’d jump nearly out of their skins at the slightest sound or motion, as at-home pet owners can testify today. Sometimes posing before birds was the only way for them to calm down, so long as they didn’t freeze into the opposite extreme not to be moved. Stories abound of dogs needing to be knocked over after indicating where to fire, lying still and statuesque on their sides for an hour or more despite kicks and prods.39 Sensing a bird nearby and calling attention to it was only part of the answer, and unlike a wolf or any well-rounded dog, the pointer never acted on his plan. He just stood there, thinking, or maybe not. Like retrievers that withdrew from the action and fetched after the fact, pointers merely looked like they were about to pounce and left the rest of the job of hunting to someone else. This failure to act is known by animal behaviorists as an “abnormal orienting response” and can be compared to staring at television for hours on end. Pointing alone, like exclusive setting and retrieving, is incomplete, juvenile behavior, and breeders encourage immaturity in pointers just as they coax show dogs to come out cute and cuddly with big, wide, cartoon eyes, high baby foreheads, childlike pouting expressions, and soft puppy coats.
Catatonic freezing was exactly what ritual hunters wanted from their overspecialized, overstylized dogs. Those idle and meticulous English drifted so far into what Arkwright himself called “rabid point-worship,” that they devised their own way of combining these costly and contemplative canines for use in a sort of weird mechanical ballet.40 “Backing,” or “honoring,” involves two or more pointers that are inbred and trained to act in concert and complement each other, only competing up to a point. The English did not invent pointing but can rightly take credit for “backing,” and the dance unfolds as follows.41
The dogs head out in search of something to point at, and the hunter trails not far behind with his gun ready to go. As soon as one dog senses birds hiding in the undergrowth, he freezes. The duty of the others is to show good manners, not initiative. Rather than rush in and flush the birds away—or take credit for having seen them first by closing in and “stealing” another dog’s point—the well-bred losers “honor” the victor for getting in on the ground floor by standing back and pointing respectfully in the same general direction.42 If the hunter by chance carried surveying equipment on his hunts, he might draw lines from each dog’s snout, or triangulate, and find they intersect more or less at the target, making easy killing easier still. Today, “backing” can be experienced virtually by watching videos posted on YouTube. Modern-day ritual hunters are proud to use the latest technology to show off their pointers in this elaborate aristocratic dance.
The custom of preserving pointers on point took hold on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, a fad for outdoor photography of these dogs in action—or inaction—gripped wealthy men enthralled in point worship. Sportsmen went out armed with guns and cameras, and became so caught up in this craze for stopping time that it’s unclear whether a pointer’s purpose was to hunt or be seen hunting in pictures—or whether shooting referred to the camera or the gun. “Mr. Arkwright recently took a number of photographs of the dogs on the moors,” reported Caspar Whitney’s ultra-snooty Outing magazine, “and in no single case did he lose his shot through the delay contingent on taking the photographs, a fact which demonstrates the keen scenting powers of the dogs, which stood to game at distances that enabled their portraits to be taken without alarming the birds.”43 Pointers helped their owners to kill two birds with one stone, and scenting talents were as crucial for posing as they were for finding prey. “These pictures were not snap shots, but were deliberately taken,” wrote another snooty sportsman for Outing, using the same term for amateur camera hobbyists lacking artistry as Lloyd might have used for unskilled gunmen.44
Pointers were as fashionable on stage as they were on film. In the early years of dog shows, these were about the only types allowed. Decades before yellow Labs hit the social scene, a lemon-yellow pointer named “Sensation” became the logo for the Westminster Kennel Club because, as former AKC president William Stifel recalls, “Westminster was still basically a Pointer club.”45 It might even be said the entire dog fancy, in England and America, began with point worship. Looking back to that early English exhibition at Newcastle upon Tyne, sponsored by a gun maker in 1859, only two classes were featured: pointers and setters. The same was true of many early events to follow, and in America, the first dog shows were also for the most part pointer shows.
Dogs were walked out by their handlers, if not into a ring, then onto a rustic scene strewn with bushes, tree branches, and caged birds hidden here and there for them to find. While the pointers froze before suspicious bales of hay, judges took notes on their posture and intensity, and onlookers sat starstruck by these high-tech homing devices of the rich and famous. Pointers were displayed at work on these replica vast estates—like those lapdogs shown curled up in miniature mansions—where they modeled their splendid fringed coats well into the twentieth century. Pointers held their own on stage, just as they posed for outdoor photographs, only with better lighting.
CHAPTER NINE
COMING HOME
What’s so offensive about dogs that do it all, but nothing perfectly? It seems the more tasks an animal can perform, the closer it comes to being a mongrel. Before returning to the Lab’s North American comeback as a “purebred” with letters patent under its collar, it might be instructive to consider how sportsmen on either side of the Atlantic were persuaded they needed England’s eugenically improved dogs in the first place.
The gap between society’s “useful” sporting dogs and its throw-pillow pets narrows further when we reflect that, throughout virtually all of English history, mutts were dealt disadvantages. Commoners’ curs were mutilated and disabled by law, and along with their owners could be hanged for poaching on a rich man’s estate or deer park, and yet the poor with their pariahs managed somehow to survive and flourish. Men dressed in any old clothes
, accompanied by dogs with asymmetrical markings, did not hunt beautifully or handsomely, but they found their sustenance in tasteless ways. Conditions for performing without an audience were harsher than anything men of quality with their picture-perfect animals ever had to endure in the spotlight. Unrefined breadwinners and their half-breed greyhounds called “lurchers,” for example, were infamous for getting around laws, and fences, and taking what they needed. There was no uniformed staff to pave their way with flowers and music, and color-coding would have gone unnoticed because they tracked their families’ food at night illicitly. Pausing to inhale the fresh air or point out an amusing rock formation would have been difficult to enjoy under such stress. Surely, these were the more skillful hunters and hounds, not the rich and their fancy companions who seemed to need inner road maps, GPS systems, and catalogues raisonnés to find the prize. Perhaps educated folk hated the rough-hewn types because it was their strength, stamina, and cunning, not an eye for scenery or class camaraderie, that got these meaner types home in one piece. Society’s underdogs obviously overcame centuries of prohibitive pricing, unfair game laws, mandatory mutilation, and a host of obstacles placed in their path, the proof being that so many commoners and mutts are still alive and with us today!
For hunting unostentatiously for food and not fun, ill-bred men and their lowly curs have shouldered much abuse and suffered more grief than they’ve deserved for thinking they might do what their social betters did best. Yet despite the valiant efforts of the upper classes to keep the tools of the trade out of the wrong hands, some hunters have sworn that mutts rule over their fancy cousins in both brains and balls. Gordon Stables aimed to nip this rumor in the bud. “‘I’ll produce a dog,’ I’ve heard a man say,” he wrote, “‘that, as far as points and appearance go, you wouldn’t give two pence for, who shall retrieve and set against any fashionable dog you can show me.’” Rubbish! “A mongrel may often, in the eyes of a novice, look as well as—if not better than—an animal of the highest breeding and pedigree; but, believe me, a mongrel is never so good, either for sporting purposes or on guard, as a thorough blood.”1 Aspiring sportsmen simply had to take the expert at his word and employ in their fledgling safaris only recognized breeds able to produce the proper papers. Never having given mutts so much as a fighting chance to prove themselves, how would they have known better? Card-carrying members of the upper classes and their hordes of imitators were no more willing to see through the outlandish claims of haughty sportsmen than they wished to expose the transparent lies of eugenics, because doing either wasn’t in their own best interests.
What sources should consumers consult before patronizing a “reputable” breeder of high-bred hunting hounds or deciding which English gun dogs are best for their New York apartments? “These may be found in the sporting print shops,” Lloyd advised in “Pure Breeds and their Ancestors,” a lengthy series of articles he wrote for the AKC’s Gazette. “The sporting artists of old enjoyed the delight of placing the man, his gun, and his spaniel together. That, indeed, represented the tout ensemble of the sportsman’s surroundings in those far-off days.”2 The thought of hunting in bad form was as offensive to the sensibilities of upper-crust sportsmen as it was threatening to insecure social climbers eager to emulate their every move by owning all the same gear. Over the ages, surprisingly few dissidents have dared to raise their voices and contradict reigning notions on what distinguishes high-class hunting dogs from unremarkable mongrels. On those rare occasions when they do, however, their impertinence is impressive.
“The author had a retriever,” one Englishman had the audacity to call a nondescript mutt, “as perfect in its business as, perhaps, one of its kind ever was.” And what kind, exactly, was that? The beast on whose behalf the author of The Young Sportsman’s Manual spoke in 1849, ten years prior to supposedly the first dog show, was “bred between the bull-dog and smooth terrier.” This hybrid mess, admittedly, looked nothing like any of the retrievers soon to be recognized as “breeds” by royalty’s Kennel Club. Yet, the author insisted, “this rare creature was as complete in all the duties of a land-retriever as in those of a water-spaniel.” A randomly bred monstrosity that could do it all, and with no family tree to support him? Impossible. The rogue sportsman’s earnest testimonial must have been treated as heresy at the time, since so few people have heard it since. Refusing to back down, he sang his dog’s praises. “In sagacity and courage, if she ever had a parallel, she never had a superior.”3
Sixty years later, in 1909, when registries were well on their way to being the only way to go for canine consumers, whether to hunt, show, or show off on sidewalks, the same Virginia medical doctor who advised treating a good dog “like a white man” partially redeemed himself by exposing a flaw in the breedist’s dogma. The doctor drove a convincing wedge. “Having had considerable experience afield with bird dogs of varied accomplishments, pedigrees, training records, and other supposedly necessary qualifications to make them good hunters,” he said as he presented his credentials,
I have naturally made some comparisons now and then between these favored canines and the common run of “pick ups” found here and there at the farmhouses all over our state, and who are of uncertain lineage and utterly unknown to fame. I have so frequently been astounded at the good work done by these unkempt dogs that I sometimes wonder if many good dogs are not overtrained, and maybe overbred! It is a fact well known that many of our best men in all walks of life are self made men, and certainly some of the very best dogs I have known have been essentially self broken and self developed.
Intelligent, skillful, reliable dogs with no breeding or training? The physician illustrated his claim with the story of one plain but high-performance “plug of a dog” he’d had the privilege of knowing and loving. “The animal was certainly of a very unprepossessing appearance. He was a kind of sorrel setter, with a decided suspicion of bull dog cross about his face. He looked sheepish and guilty, and had a woebegone eye. . . . I never saw a more unpromising dog, nor have I ever hunted with a better one.”4
This was before the Labrador retriever arrived to dispel all doubts on the superiority of purebreds. While American consumers were still wavering between having Bostons or collies as family pets, the Lab’s victorious return to its ancestral home was being given quite a buildup. “The Lab’s success in America is a tribute to the dog himself rather than to his importer,” claimed Richard Wolters in his definitive book on the breed, skirting around the fact that the Labrador arrived on American soil under the snootiest of circumstances.5 After a long residency with the Malmesburys, the Buccleuchs, and families of their ilk, the erstwhile mutt was back to claim his throne in a young nation already fixated on wealth and social standing.
Wolters continued, commenting on the refashioned Saint John’s water dog:
The Lab’s return to North America was actually part of a fad, a whim of the times. During the Roaring Twenties—the jazz era, the flapper society, the time of the Charleston, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and good Scotch whiskey—wealthy Americans were fascinated by the royalty of Europe. American wealth could buy anything except an official social order such as in England and Scotland. The “in” thing of the times was to have British aristocracy amongst one’s friends. Nothing could be more elegant than an invitation to shoot down grouse on the Scottish moors.6
A contemporary of this fad concurred on the Lab’s heyday of the twenties and thirties: “In the very early days there were a number of wealthy Americans who patterned themselves after the British gentry.”7 The same class of people who’d scoured foreign nations for palace artifacts and stud-in-laws were importing the whole Labrador experience lock, stock, and barrel. Money was no object when recreating a noble pastime. As with collie and pointer fads, entire kennels and kennel men familiar with the breed were brought over on steamships. The Blooming Grove Hunting & Fishing Club in Pennsylvania, the Wyandanch Club on Long Island, Westminster’s gun club, and like-minded venues across the country cater
ed to their limited membership’s every hunting whim. “The clubs had regular recruiters who brought in young Scottish gamekeepers,” Wolters also had to admit, “and many wealthy families turned their estates into Scottish shooting preserves.”8 Spendthrift American sportsmen, eager to surround themselves with all the trappings and then insert themselves like crown jewels, bought up as much land as they could and had the latest artillery delivered from the finest London houses. New York’s Abercrombie & Fitch became official purveyor of sporting outfits and accessories, also selling guns and publishing books on dogs.9 Properly clad, handsomely armed, and primed with manuals on hunting etiquette, rich Americans needed something to shoot. So they reared their own birds as English and Scottish lords had done for generations. An estimated one hundred thousand were raised and brought down each year by a small number of well-to-do who, when they weren’t catering to foreign nobility, were keeping mostly to themselves.
A Matter of Breeding Page 21