Canis lupus hominis

The following is an entry in Hugh Dalziel’s British Dogs:

A few years ago the Russian retriever was often met with at our shows, and Mr. E. B. Southwell’s Czar scored a good number of first prizes in the variety classes, but for two seasons past I do not recollect to have seen a specimen at any show.

I believe “Idstone’s ” is the only book on the dog in our language that has deigned to notice this breed. And “Idstone” very summarily dismisses him thus: “I recollect seeing one of them at a battue, which attempted to fetch a hare from a thick brake, and became so entangled amongst the thorns and ‘ burs,’ that the beaters had to cut away a quantity of his coat to liberate him, and in the confusion the hare was lost. Further comments on the Russian retriever for this country is needless.”

A single glance at the dog would show anyone that he is of no use in a thick brake of thorns, briars, or whins, but it does not follow that he is of no use in this country; and the anecdote related by “Idstone” seems to me rather to reflect on the man who put the dog to work for which he was so evidently unsuited than on the dog. We have unquestionably dogs far better fitted for retrieving under any conditions in wood or wild, on land or from water, than the Russian retriever, but as a distinct variety we have room for him if only as a companion and guard, using him as a retriever under suitable conditions when required.

I have said that in dog books, in that of “Idstone” alone is he referred to, but “Stonehenge” gives a woodcut of a Russian setter crossed with English setter, which appears to me a modification of the Russian retriever.

The Russian retriever is a large leggy dog, very squarely built, with an excess of hair all over him, long, thick, and inclining to curl, a large short head, round and wide in the skull, rather short and square in the jaw, not unlike a poodle. The ears are medium sized, pendulous, heavily covered with hair; the legs are’ straight, covered with long hair front and back, like an Irish water spaniel. The eyes and whole face are covered with long hair, like a modern Skye terrier, but more abundantly. The coat throughout is long and dense, and requires great care to keep it in anything like order, as it readily gets felted.

They are generally extremely docile, very intelligent, and show great power of scent, and for “tricks” of retrieving from land or water excellent, and they make good watch dogs, and it is only as companion dogs they are likely to take a place in this country. I have known three that I consider good specimens, namely, Mr. E. B. Southwell’s Czar; one the property of Mr. Pople, of the British Hotel, Perth; and one that met with a tragic end, having been burnt to death in a fire which destroyed the house of his owner in Villiers-street, Strand. I should say the height of each referred to would be about 26in. at shoulder, and the colour throughout a grey.

Marcia Schlehr in The New Golden Retiever thinks these dogs might be komondorok or possibly the South Russian ovtcharka. That is certainly a possibility, but the temperament is a bit off. The temperament is more like a retriever or a poodle than a livestock guardian dog.

Rawdon Lee agrees with me:

There used to be an impression abroad that there were two varieties of poodle, the Russian poodle and the French poodle; but the error, however it arose, is now corrected, and we know that the black and the white poodle are common to both nations, as they are to other countries in Europe. A huge black or brown dog occasionally seen in England, where it went by the name of the Russian retriever, was originally imported to cross with our own retrievers to increase the size of the latter. At any rate this was said at the time, but our retrievers were already quite big enough, and the so-called Russian dog was nothing more than a huge poodle.

As a fact, there are more than two varieties of the poodle, and I cannot bring myself to believe that this great big dog from Russia, 8olb. weight or more, is of the same variety as the little mite of a creature 61b. in weight, or even less, which is well known and can be trained to perform sundry tricks, which it does pretty nearly as well as the bigger dogs. Indeed, that of standing on its head on the palm of its owner’s hand could not be well done by a dog thirty or forty pounds in weight.

Lee calls this breed the “Russian monster,” and he thinks that every attempt to breed them to retrievers is going to be mess.

Now, I wonder if there actually were some of these dogs behind the retrievers a Guisachan. There are some Russian-sounding names, like Alma, in some of the kennel records.

Now, I hate to muddy the waters here, but poodles have always been a staple in European circuses. Maybe there actually were poodles of this type that were in a traveling circus were in some way behind the Guisachan retrievers. However, these dogs arrived earlier than than Trench believed they arrived.

And that may be the source for the Russian circus dog rumor.

Of course, there are no historical  records to back me up, and what I am suggesting is little more than speculation. In fact, these dogs with Russian names may have never had a role in the yellow retriever line.

And I will reaffirm that the story that the line that led to golden retrievers were wavy-coats derived from the Nous and Belle breeding.

But a poodle-type dog does make more sense as an outcross for a retriever than a livestock guardian dog.

Nothing more than interesting but idle speculation.