Natural History

Flat-coated retrievers with a pile of rabbits.

From British Dogs: Their Points, Selection, and Show Preparation (1903) by W.D. Drury:

For the writer’s part, if breaking a dog to his own hand, he would be less rigorous and exacting as regards the question of absolute steadiness. Almost from the commencement of his shooting days he has had a line of faithful helpmates that have had to fulfil the role, not only of the Retriever proper, but also that of Setter, Spaniel, and Sleuth-hound. His Retrievers have to find game, flush it, and retrieve it promptly to hand; nor is he so very particular if they make a start on the last-named mission before receiving the word of command. When one is on a tarn or a snipe-bog, it is as well that one’s dog should be off the mark pretty quickly, if he is to successfully retrieve a winged duck, or a snipe that falls fifty yards out in the water, beyond the rushes. Furthermore, the writer fears that he has caused thrills of horror in many a pheasant-slayer’s heart when he has sent his best Retriever into a furze-brake [a copse of gorse] to make the rabbits scuttle. For all that, he is always ready to back himself to go out, singlehanded, on a moor with one dog, and that dog a Flat-coated Retriever, and bring home a bigger and more varied bag than anyone else with one dog of any other breed; especially if there is any wild-fowl work to be done; for the dogs of the Blackthorn, Darenth, Zelstone, and Black Drake strain are, almost without exception, particularly brilliant at water. To see them work for snipe or duck is a revelation to those who have been accustomed to view a Retriever by the light of the broken-spirited porters who steadily collect game after a battue or drive.

If, perchance, the writer is so ill-advised as to let off at a hare that is beyond certain killing distance, and the poor brute makes off with a shattered hind leg, or vitals penetrated by only a pellet or two, he does not hesitate to send his dusky henchman on the war trail, chancing whether the dog will, in consequence, run in at the next hare that springs, or not.

The fact that Retrievers are only presumed to exist for the purpose of fetching and carrying is responsible for another fact— viz. that our sporting American cousins ignore the breed altogether, and no efforts on our part have ever succeeded in popularising the breed over the Herring Pond. They logically ask, “Say, what do we want with Retrievers? All our Pointers and Setters are taught the job.” But if it could be impressed upon them that a Retriever of the right sort will also do any kind of work that is asked of him, America might be the richer for one of the handsomest, cleverest, and most docile of the canine species (pg. 353-354).

Drury is writing about using a retriever very differently than one would have used them at trials or formal estate shoots. This the view of the retriever as a versatile hunting dog.  It is something very different from worrying about others think about a dog’s performance. It is that the dog performs.

It is an unorthodox statement today, and it certainly would have been unorthodox then.

But it should make us stop and think for a bit.

Americans would have been okay with water spaniels and Chesapeake Bay dogs, which are well-known to be quite versatile dogs. Many stories exist of Chesapeake Bay retrievers, the present time not accepted, baying raccoons and foxes.

It is also of note that Drury, who was British, thought of using a retriever to hunt duck as an unorthodox use.  The flat-coated retriever of the day was the most common breed of retriever, and its main utility was at the driven shoot. And the game was mostly pheasants, partridges, and wood and domestic pigeons.  Hares and rabbits were also taken, and it still common for British retrievers to take lagomorphs, and in Europe, they often are required to retrieve foxes.

Americans eventually found retrievers were good for ducking hunting, and although they can be used for other things, the popular imagination sees them as only duck dogs. Duck hunting in America is about the only thing that fully resembles a British driven shoot.

We have this kind of preserve shooting in the United States, but it is far less common than the British model. And in the early days, we had almost none of it. The birds were native and wild, and we used setters and then pointers. We in effect turned them into HPR’s, because we began to demand that both pointers and setters retrieve, a requirement that never existed in Britain.  This demand that they retrieve led to a lot of crossbreeding between setters and pointers in the United States, for it was widely known that pointers often were very hard to teach to retrieve. But everyone knew of a setter that was a natural retriever, so they were routinely crossbred.