One half of the Devil's parentage.
The retriever known as the Devil has appeared on this blog a few times. The dog was an unusual retriever for his time, but he was apparently good enough to beat some of the best wavy or flat-coated retrievers of his day. I didn’t know his exact ancestry, so I even called him an early “doodle.”
And it turns out that I was partially right.
The first mention I read of this particular dog was in George Teasdale-Buckell The Complete English Shot. Teasdale- Buckell describes Devil on page 184:
The Devil had been obviously named for his looks. He was a curly sandy-brown, with whiskers like an otter hound.
I found another mention of this same dog in Stonhenge’s Dogs of the British Islands. Stonehenge (John Henry Walsh) actually reveals the actual heritage of this dog:
Mr. B. J. Lloyd Price’s Devil, a curly liver-coloured dog, apparently a cross between the Irish water-spaniel and the poodle, bred by Sir P. Nugent, is the only dog I have ever seen perform in public to my satisfaction, showing great perseverance in hunting, with a good nose.
So the dog known as the devil was actually an Irish water spaniel/poodle cross.
I’m sure this gets the attention of my poodle and Irish water spaniel readers, but I was just glad to finally learn the origin of this unusual retriever.
But he apparently was good enough to give the wavy/flat-coated retriever trial dogs a run for their money.
