Here’s footage of a Clumber hunting. Compare it with the working cockers in the earlier post. These dogs operate in very different manner. I’ve never seen a flushing dog operate with such sedation!
I have always wondered about this breed. Most of the gun dog breeds are similar in temperament. The Chesapeake Bay Retriever is an outlier, because it’s far more protective than any of the other breeds in the gourp. The Clumber is also an outlier in that it apparently always worked game in this slow fashion. Now that it’s no longer being bred for that purpose, my guess is that it is even more sedate.
All sorts of theories exist about its origins. One is that a breed called an Alpine Spaniel, which I’ve never heard of and there’s no record of, was the ancestor of the breed. I wonder if this isn’t a cross between a St. Bernard and spaniel. The Clumber is almost exactly like a St. Bernard in behavior, just it has a spanielness to it. May there’s a touch of basset in the dog, too.
Whatever it is, my guess is most modern gun dog fanciers will go with springers. This dog is a museum piece. It has a wonderful history, but in utility, it’s certainly lacking.
BTW, flews have little to do with soft mouth, as I’m sure all the retriever people who saw this video screamed when they heard that part. If this were true, all the retrievers would have heavier lips than any mastiff. I have actually never seen a Clumber retrieve shot game, but maybe they do. I’ve only actually seen one Clumber in my entire life, but it didn’t act anything like what I expected a gun dog to act like.
Now this breed does well at conformation shows. One won Westminster a few years back. He’s depicted in that video, as is the one that won Cruft’s.
Now, as a pet, my guess is that such a sedate dog would be a better choice than a golden retriever or a springer spaniel, which are far more active dogs. It’s likely that this breed will be pet rather than a hunting dog, especially when it lacks the biddability and speed of all the other spaniels used for flushing.
According to a Swedish retriever-expert Göran Hermelin writes in his book “Spaniel och retriever”: “…the Clumber is said to make an ideal flushing dog for a senior hunter, who can’t anymore walk fast in the fields”.
Also, Hermelin writes: “The dog seeks slowly, but very fundamentally and has a very sharp scent”.
And: “It’ll never lose its nerves. It’s easy to teach, it will it remember once”. (my translation fr. Swedish).
So, seems to make a very good-temper pet.
What comes to a soft mouth: heavy lips offer a bigger “sticking surface” to a thing the dog carries in his mouth. This is called “friction” in physics. My lab carries the bread bought from the bakery and packed in a small paper bag by that “friction tactic”.
Soft mouth has more to do with jaw pressure than lops. I had a golden that had a narrow muzzle with smaller flews, and she was very, very soft-mouthed.
The heavier load, the more pressure the dog needs to keep it in the mouth. A soft-mouthed dog intuitely knows how much she has use the power. It’s in genes, eh?
If that kind of dog, with big lips carries light things, she won’t need much of the teeth pressure, the friction is enough.
In Mayday, my lab carries balloons for minutes before they exploit.
This is the only secret of the big lips.
My half boxer, however, was very, very hard-mouthed, and I don’t have to tell you what kind of flews she had.