Canis lupus hominis

This dog is “Thorn.” He was owned by Sewallis E. Shirley, a member of parliament and founding president of the kennel club.

This depiction is from Hugh Dalziel’s British Dogs.

Thorn is further described in the text. Despite his smaller size, Thorn is a dog.

Mr. S. E. Shirley’s (M.P.) Thorn: Age, 5 years; height at shoulder, 22½in.; length from nose to set on of tail, 37in.; length of tail, 15in.; girth of chest, 29½in.; girth of head, 16½in.; girth of forearm, 9in.; length of head from occiput to tip of nose, 10½in.; girth of muzzle midway between eyes and tip of nose, 10in.

Dalziel lists his dam as Young Bounce. This is incorrect. Young Bounce was the dam of his sire, who was named Paris.

A dog named Paris is depicted below in Stonehenge’s work:

Paris is the heavier dog on the left, showing a Newfoundland-type influence. Melody, on the right, shows a more setter influence.

However, this may be a different dog, because Stonehenge says that this dog has a different ancestry than the dog in Thorn’s pedigree:

Both Paris and Morley are said to be pure Labradors  [St. John’s water dogs], the former being by Sir Henry Paulett’s imported Labrador Lion, out of Bess, an imported Labrador bitch. Paris has Won repeatedly the champion prizes at the Crystal Palace and Dublin shows.

It wouldn’t surprise me if there were two dogs named Paris living at roughly the same time. The Paris in the Stonehenge work tends to be of the type that would late be culled out of the wavy/flat-coat line but later preserved and then promoted in the modern golden retriever line.

***

Whatever the particulars of Thorn’s ancestry, this text further shows how important Sewallis Shirley was in standardizing the old wavy-coated retriever. The old wavy-coated retriever is, of course, the most important strain of retriever. Its lineage can be found in all the other breeds of retriever, except the curly-coated retriever, and it is the direct ancestor of the golden and flat-coat.

As I mentioned before, Mr. Shirley is not only important for retrievers, but he was the founding president of the Kennel Club. Not only was he a political figure, but he was considered an expert in all things canine. And thus, he and his friends put together a gentlemen’s club to promote dog shows and field trials.

To organize all the dogs that were eligible for these events, Mr. Shirley compiled a 600-page stud book for dogs. It was the first of its kind– a Burke’s Peerage for canines. To fill in the narratives about the ancestry of these dogs, he collaborated with the Rev. Thomas Pearce (“Idstone”) to fill in the various pedigrees of all the dogs in the book.

Although one wonders how accurate Pearce’s history actually was, his historiography and that of John Henry Walsh (“Stonehenge”) became the foundational histories of so many different breeds of dog.

The stud book would later become a closed system of ensuring blood purity among various strains. As these founding breeds ran into internecine squabbles, new breeds materialized from the schisms– the golden retriever being a very good example. New breeds were discovered working on farms in Europe and North America, and others were found in the far corners of the world.  It was not long before all sorts of unusual dogs began to appear at shows.

When Sewallis Shirley founded the Kennel Club in 1873, I don’t think he had any idea of how far this institution would go. The Kennel Club model has been emulated throughout the world, which is rather strange, for it is probably the only Victorian institution that still exists largely unchanged since its founding.

And that is how it started. The modern purebred dog institution began with a retrieverman.

Update:  Eley was confused– both Bounces were bitches.