My assessment of this piece by George Horlor is the red dog and black and tan dog represent are most likely Gordon setters. The other dog is a prototype of what became the English setter.
These dogs are more heavily-built setters than we typically imagine them today, even when we consider that Gordon setters are bigger and more heavily built than the other breeds.
These dogs definitely had a role in the development of the retrievers. The red dog has some features we ‘d associate with modern golden retrievers . The skull is broader, and the build has some bone to it.
Also note the lighter, almost golden shadings on the red dog. These features are very strongly associated with very dark golden retrievers.
So when we think of setters from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we should not automatically assume that all of them were like the dogs of today.
Some of the dogs were indeed much more retriever-like than we might have previously assume.
And the connections between setters and the “setter-retrievers” (goldens and flat-coats) become more obvious.
Four posts in one day! Good to see you back with all guns a blazin retriever man.
I was a tad concerned that you might ride off into the sunset leaving my life devoid of canine facts, wildlife musings and of course your bigfoot piffle.
How do artists paint dogs when most of us are lucky to get a dog to sit still for long enough to photograph it?
Yeah. I’m back.
The history of setters is quite as interesting as that of the retrievers. 18th- 19th century texts refer to a wide variety of strains; many of the large estates had their own strain or breed of setters (and also of retrievers and of spaniels). Setters could be found in all the solid colors including cream, liver, black, red, and “sandy”, as well as the same with white markings. In fact, the original Gordon setter was a tricolor (black, tan, white).
The setter itself was often referred to as “an improved spaniel”, having been developed from the spaniels used to locate birds on the ground for netting, before the use of firearms became common. The original setters, like their spaniel forebears, “set”, that is, crouched low to the ground instead of the upright “point” that is preferred today.
C. Bede Maxwell’s book “The Truth about Sporting Dogs” is a trove of information (although sadly out of print) as is Gilbert Leighton-Boyce’s “A Survey of Early Setters” published in the UK.
I read something in I believed Dalziel’s British Dogs about a cross between a pointer and setter. It was called a “dropper,” and it was deemed entirely useless.
I’ve seen photos and paintings of Gordons in many different colors.
The most common nonstandard color in Gordons is liver and tan, but I’ve seen tricolors of both black and liver variants and solid red ones that look a bit like golden retrievers.
The field line Gordons are closer to working strain English setters in appearance, although they are obviously Gordons.
Because a lot of these dogs have white on their chests and some are parti-colored, it is often suggested that they are part Llewellins– that someone has added a little Llewellin to their bloodline.
In your book, you mention a strain of setter that was cream or wheaten in color from the Scottish Borders. I believe it was called the Featherstone Castle setter and the depiction looks a lot like a golden retriever. Do you know anything more about them?
It was an engraving by Reinagle that was identified as a Featherstone Castle setter by Rachel Page Elliott. In the original handcolored engravings, the dog is a cream or pale yellow color. It is heavier in build than today’s “English” setter, with a broader skull and a slightly wavy coat. Actually rather retriever-y.
In other written references, the Featherstone Castle dog is referred to as “liver” in color. But at the time, “Liver” could refer to any shade of yellow, brown, “sandy”, or red. Featherstone Castle was located in the Borders region (from whence came several of our modern breeds, or contributors to them). Would have to find the reference again for more detail.
M.R.S. Maybe that explains why some of my hybrids have been reported as pointing in the field. Due to the Spaniel influence??? Just a guess.
I also read some interesting excerpts from “A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution” ‘Raymond and Laura Coppinger’…
“I would like to ask a couple of questions. In this case there was an animal (Retriever) with superior behavior that by chance also had a unique color. It is also possible that the unique color of Nous conferred favoritism on him, which in turn enriched the development of his superior qualities. Was it nature or nurture that led to his superiority? Lord Tweedmouth offered no conjecture. But Nous was not only supported, he bacame a favored stud. Nous was being bred to superior animals to produce superior puppies.”
“There are two assumptions here: 1) the superior ability is genetic and 2) the pups inherit their superior behavior from Nous. However, much fun and romance is involved in these decisions (conclusions), I’d like to offer a counter hypothesis: Nous was a favorite simply because of his color and got more attention. He was bred to good dogs of other breeds and the pups were superior because of hybrid vigor, because their mothers were superior, and because people expected them to be superior and therefore favored them.”
I think coat color has a huge selection value for who gets bred to whom. Humans are capricious and have good abilities for seeing color. For dogs, who have either terrible or no sense of color, coat color doesn’t mean anything. The sole advantage of unusual coat color it that it gains the individual dog support from humans. In the natural breeds, human fancy for a distinctive color is of little harm because the natural breeds still breed on their own, and survival of the fittest will still prevail. But when people finally get to artificially isolating these animals and sorting for capricious reasons-then dogs are in trouble. ….”
It sort of hit the nail on the head for me when it came to understanding why in the beginning the breeds were better off than they are now. The isolation from being within a closed registry occurred over time but because of human intervention it was a speck in time compared to natural selection. And the detrimental effects of limited diversity were just inevitable. All because humans preferred things a certain way. But if we revisit the beginning of each man-made breed history there is much to be learned in recreating a healthier specimen again. For many of the hardcore purists it means reliving the process from step one all over again and making sure it doesn’t get as far off course to repeat itself to the current state all over again.
But convincing a purest that tainting their lines with outcrossing is better long term….Like pulling teeth.
Coppingers’ book is excellent, but they may have misstated about Nous: according to the Guisachan record book Nous was bred only to Belle, the Tweed Water Spaniel. Yes, he may well have been bred to other bitches outside of the Guisachan kennel. But it seems highly unlikely that he would have been bred or kept solely on account of the color: retrievers in those days were working dogs, not pets, not show dogs: retrievers (and other gun dogs) that did not perform sufficiently well, simply didn’t survive.
Not to say that Marjoribanks didn’t appreciate the beauty of the dogs, and their personalities: but first of all, they were required to work. Nearly all gun dogs belonged to the landed gentry or higher classes, people with their own estates on which to raise game and to hunt (or friends in their own class who did). Few people in the lower classes could even afford to keep and feed a dog the size of a retriever, when they could not use it for any practical purpose.
The eventual popularity of dog shows, of course, changed matters in many regards. As did changes in society that enabled dog ownership to many more people.
But I think Coppinger has rather overstated the case, concerning Nous.
I felt that later in the book he used that statement to back his claims on hybrid vigor. The argument being that the products of Nous with Superior specimens provided superior dogs through heterosis, more so than selection…at least in the beginning.
Did Coppinger mean “superior” to other contemporary dogs, or “superior” to purebred dogs of today?
As the dogs were at that time selected primarily on the basis of their work, yes, it’s quite probable that a line of dogs was developed with the intent of them being good, or better, workers than was common.
But one could question whether those early dogs really were “superior” to dogs of today (if that is what Coppinger meant)– in what way, I wonder?
They certainly did have health problems, including dysplasia, several forms of blindness, epilepsy (“fits”) although not recognized for what they really were. Were they “better” workers? Who knows? How would that be judged? Were they longer-lived? I expect not, as early mortality was far higher. Were the survivors tougher for having made it through a perilous early life? Perhaps (a form of natural selection at work?)
At any rate, if humans had not had a hand in selection over centures of time, we wouldn’t have any of the specialist dogs; they’d all still be “pariahs” and “village dogs”.
I have some issues with Coppinger.
I don’t think his domestication theory is what happened. I think he was observing dogs that no one cared about and abused and used them as his ancestral dog population. I think it’s not the best methodology.
I do not believe in the self-domestication of the domestic dog. Human agency would have had to have played some role.
One would think that lots of other animals would have become domesticated because they scavenge off of people, but I’ve not seen as single domestic raccoon, brush-tailed possum, or Eurasian badger.
His dates for domestication are off. Dogs are at least 16,000 years old, and the earliest dogs appear long before the advent of agriculture or semi-permanent settlements, which happened 12,000 years ago.
Coppinger’s book is okay.
I think it over-simplifies some areas, which I have written about elsewhere.
The obsession with motor pattern dependence I think is a little misleading.
If what he says is true, then a golden retriever with strong retrieving instincts could never kill a rabbit.
But I’ve seen it myself.
quote –
For dogs, who have either terrible or no sense of color, coat color doesn’t mean anything. – coppinger
____________________________________
wow – thats a stunning mis-statement.
dogs see color thru a pastel-spectrum, not jewel tones and without the color saturation we primates do – but they are not trying to find red or blue fruit among green foliage, either.
they see an incredible gradation of greys,
are extremely motion sensitive visually,
and have excellent low-light vision –
which we humans lack.
they are red-green color blind, but thats not a disaster.
plenty of dogs who learned to like or dislike or fear dogs of a particular COLOR have no problem distinguishing other dogs, different from the original association, who have that same color…
my Akita had a dear buddy as a pup, a black retired-racing Greyhound named Lucy that she worshipped; for the rest of her life, if she saw a charcoal or black sighthound, she wanted to go see if it was Lucy –
she ignored pied dogs that were mostly white, or solid cream, blue, and sandy dogs; black dogs with white toes or a locket on their chest (which Lucy lacked) would catch her eye till we got close, then she would lose interest.
i worked with a clients dog who had been thrashed by a Samoyed, and any white or cream dog that was over 40# and had a coat (not a smooth-coat, IOW – no cream Labs worried him), scared the tar out of the poor dog.
a white GSD to my eye does not look much like a Sammy,
but they were similar enuf to terrify him.
he ignored prick or drop ears – that was immaterial;
it was size, color, double-coat.
a Pyr was a monster to him, so was a cream Siberian.
i;m surprised to see that error of fact –
that dogs are color-blind – stated so flatly.
heres a link with a k9-spectrum –
http://tinyurl.com/2mbmg
all my best,
— terry
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
Interesting. The line of (working) Llewellin setters my grandfather kept and bred were fairly similar in build to these: bigger, heavier, deeper-chested, and broader-headed than is common even in most working setters now. They were/probably still are also extremely healthy, without all the hip and elbow problems. Show-standard breeding has as much to answer for with setters as with retrievers. :/
I hadn’t spotted the retriever resemblance as such, but it makes sense. I can see it with the red Gordon-looking dog, in particular.