This dog’s features tell us a lot about how Irish water spaniels could have evolved from crossing the poodle-type water dog with some variety of spaniel or proto-setter. He has a smooth muzzle (see this close up for verification) and a topknot.
It would not be impossible to breed a type of water spaniel with a long, curly coat and smooth muzzle through crossing a poodle-type with a spaniel-type.
Don’t ask me how they got the rat tail, but this is how you get the topknot and smooth muzzle.
The only Poodle crosses I have seen with a smooth face have been Afghan/Poodle. Very nice dog. She even boings.
http://stephenbodio.blogspot.com/2009/07/mystery-hound.html
Saluki doodles, from a smooth bitch to a Poodle sire, hairy faces:
http://www.xanadoodle.com/Site/SOLD_PUPPIES.html
These type of doodles only happen when breeding back to goldens.
It’s not really a doodle, then, is it? Maybe a doo or dle.
They just call them F2 doodles. Most are bred back to poodles, not goldens.
Wish we knew how McCarthy created the Irish Water Spaniel. He didn’t write it down, as far as is known.
My IWS bitch looks Afghan-y. I’ve had more than one person ask me if she’s an Afghan x Poodle cross. I was going through my blog to see if I could find a picture that would show this, but not a whole lot of luck.
Maybe the middle of http://patricedodd.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/dog-shows-are-inexplicable/ It’s a dog show picture, but might show it anyhow.
Interesting. I seriously doubt that these dogs are all that ancient. I think spaniels and water dogs are fairly old, but breeding them together– well, the earliest known description of a water spaniel of any sort is Caius and that is the 1500’s.
C. Bede Maxwell did a considerable amount of research on historical aspects of the sporting breeds some years ago. Her book “The Truth About Sporting Dogs” is very interesting. She voices the suspicion that there might be a connection between the Afghan hound and the Irish Water Spaniel, based on their similar and unique coat pattern. (M’Carthy never said….) Perhaps modern DNA testing could provide more information..but neither breed was including in the current research on coat types, as far as I know.
Both Afghans and IWS were included in the “Coat Variation in the Domestic Dog Is Governed by Variants in Three Genes” study. IWS carry the mutations for ‘long’ and ‘curly.’ Afghan hounds do not have either.
Since I was not able to find the original publication re: the study of dog coat types, I should have said “I don’t know if…”
Would love to have a link to that study, if such is available.
If Afghans don’t have “that” long-hair gene, perhaps there is a different one that they have?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897713/?tool=pubmed
Maybe with Afghans it’s a different mutation they haven’t isolated yet. IIRC, Yorkies and Silkies also do not have the long hair mutation. Whatever it is that Afghans have, it combines nicely with Salukis, which do have the long coat gene. It also may account for the smooth Afghans that crop up, three or so in a decade, where one of the coat genes has mutated back to smooth.
I’d like to see what Taigan and Asian Tazis have.