The following anecdote comes from Hutchinson’s Dog Breaking (1869). The its veracity should be taking with a grain of salt, for it sound suspiciously like a violation of Morgan’s canon. However, it is an interesting story, for we do know that St. John’s water dogs often ate fish offal. They were also left to roam when they weren’t being used, and there are many accounts of them fishing along Newfoundland and Labrador’s shores, lakes, and streams.
The story goes like this:
At certain seasons of the year the streams in some parts of North America, not far from the coast, are filled with fish to an extent you could scarcely believe, unless you had witnessed it—and now comes the Munchausen story. A real Newfoundland [meaning St. John’s water dog], belonging to a farmer who lived near one of those streams, used, at such times, to keep the house well supplied with fish. He thus managed it:— He was perfectly black, with the exception of a white fore foot, and for hours together he would remain almost immoveable on a small rock which projected into the stream, keeping his white foot hanging over the edge as a lure to the fish. He remained so stationary that it acted as a very attractive bait; and whenever curiosity attempted any unwary fish to approach him too close, the dog plunged in, seized his victim, and carried him off to the foot of a neighboring tree; and, on a successful day, he would catch a great number (pg. 267-268).
I think that is possible that a dog could figure out how to lure fish. However, it is also possible that this dog was just a very good stalker. Maybe the white foot was in the water just because that foot was dominant. The white foot may have been a lure, or maybe the black dog was just very hard for the fish to see.
My guess is that this dog learned how to stalk fish in Newfoundland, where being as still as possible on the shore was the only way to be successful.
We really don’t know what was happening here. The tendency to be quite anthropomorphic was fairly common in those days, but one should understand that Hutchinson wrote the book on training hunting dogs, especially retrievers.
So maybe this dog actually did figure out that his white foot was a lure, and Hutchinson reported it correctly. Of course, it may have been a second-hand account, and Hutchinson may have never seen to dog stalk fish from the shore.
I think it was just a coincidence that the dog’s foot happened to be in the water when it stalked fish.
This dog was just a good fish stalker.
And to roam free and feed oneself on Newfoundland, one had to be a good hunter. That would probably was the reason why this dog was so good at taking fish from the shore.
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This dog clearly appears to have been a St. John’s water dog. It is difficult to tell what kind of coat it had, but it appears to have had a longer coat than the later examples of his breed.
The picture could had been the artist’s impression based on the St. John Water Dogs sold by the merchants.
That is true, but the fact that this type of Newfoundland was depicted –and not the Great Bear Newfoundland that actually was being regularly sold by merchants in Great Britain– tells us that Hutchinson wanted this sort of dog depicted.
I am actually somewhat skeptical of the theory that the big Newfoundland was native to Newfoundland, but there are contradictory accounts of them possibly being there.
If I recall correctly, from one of your past posts on the issue, the fishermen’s Water Dogs found in Newfoundland are different from the Water Dogs found on mercantile ships; and those are different from the ones sold to the people of Britain to the gentry and to the non-seafaring merchants; all of this despite the common stock.
So I am not sure what the picture is based on?
It’s not the dogs on the mercantile ships that were different originally.
Hutchinson was an enthusiast of the St. John’s breed, always recommending that it be used as a retriever or that one should cross it with something and use the puppies as retrievers.
Hutchinson claims that the big Newfoundland was never found on Newfoundland, but that it was a derivative of the St. John’s breed, just bulked up in size for the market.
Many dogs on the mercantile ships later on were the big ones, but it seems to me much more likely that the original dogs were the St. John’s type.
There is actually a huge, long-standing debate about all of this. Which is the “true” Newfoundland dog? It is a very contentious subject.
My take is the big dog was derived from the long-haired culls that were exported earilier on. The long-haired culls were of no use to the people in Newfoundland or Labrador, but they were good pets and great retrievers. Some of these were bulked up through selective breeding and probably cross-breeding with something else big and hairy.
One of the reasons why I think this is possible is there is a story of a Newfoundand dog of some sort helped rescue 160 Irish immigrants from a shipwreck off Isle aux Morts, Newfoundland. This dog’s name was Hairy Man, which to me sounds like a weird name for a dog. If the majority of the dogs on the coast were long-haired and like the modern Newfoundand dog, wouldn’t it be silly to name one “Hairy Man” ?
This is what Hutchinson thought about the “true Newfoundland.” Also from Dog Breaking:
If it was during a salmon run, it isn’t so surprising that a dog could catch fish. There’s a few videos of wolves doing the same:
I remember seeing another video showing a wolf pack being more active in their fishing (including some diving), but could not find it again on a general search.
Peggy Richter