These dogs both appear in works by Stonehenge (John Henry Walsh). They lived in the middle of the nineteenth century:
The dog above is George. George was of Rosehill breeding, and although a short-legged dog, he is not extremely so. Many spaniels of the time had relatively short legs, but it was never as extreme as the old show-type field spaniel or the extreme type that eventually became the modern Sussex spaniel.
Here’s another depiction of George in a Stonehenge work. He is accompanied by another dog named Romp. George is the background; Romp is in the foreground. Neither is as exaggerated as a modern Sussex.
These dogs have short legs, but they are not extreme. The difference between these dogs and the modern Sussex is the difference between any working breed of basset in France and the show basset hound that was developed in England.
Have a look at this fawn basset of Brittany. It has relatively longer legs than the show basset we know in the English speaking world and is still widely used for hunting in France and in other
European countries.
Most rabbit hunters in the US don’t use bassets, and if they do, they use the French breeds, crosses between the English breed and the French breeds, basset/beagle crosses, or very rare field line bassets, which often have a few harrier ancestors. They don’t normally use the show dogs. They are just that inefficiently built. English bassets have been bred for show and pet for many generations, and very little consideration has been given to their working ability. (See this video to get an idea what happened to the English basset.)
The same thing happened to the Rosehill Sussex spaniel. Breeding for extreme short legs became a major fad in the show ring, which later became part and parcel of the breed standard. Fuller wanted a short-legged dog that gave tongue when on the hunt, but he didn’t want something that was so short-legged it was nonfunctional.
And that’s exactly what happened to Sussex spaniels by the end of the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth, the dogs of the Rosehill type began to look like this:
This dog is Ch. Bridford Giddie. He was bred by Moses Woolland, who did use his dogs in shooting, but it doesn’t seem to me that any consideration was given to this dog’s working conformation. If he had any competence in the field, it was in spite of his conformation, not because of it. This is precisely the conformation that leads to slipped and herniated discs, which is not a trivial matter at all. My father had a hunting dachshund when he was growing up. The dog was very good at hunting all sorts of things, but he was always having slipped discs and had to be confined for long periods of time.
From that conformation distortion, the Sussex has never recovered. The field spaniel, which used to have even shorter legs, has corrected this flaw. It could potentially recover, for it does have many traits that might make it a good working gun dog. I don’t see the same future for the Sussex, which never was all that popular.
I find it interesting that some people use Sussex spaniels to hunt birds. I also find it interesting that Cavaliers can be used to do the same. It doesn’t mean that either are the first choices for working spaniels or that others might be better choices.
In the real world, breeds succeed or fail on two metrics. One is they can be perfectly conformed for their task in terms of both body and behavior. So long as their utility still exists, the dogs will exist. The other way a breed can succeed is to become popular in the pet market, which is not always a positive development. The pet market is quite fickle and so many different breeds have risen and fallen according to its undulations. Often, what becomes popular in a pet becomes detrimental to the dog’s original function. For example, the really long hair on an American cocker spaniel that so many people love must be chopped off if the dog is ever to be used as a flushing spaniel. And that’s why the working American cocker is about as rare as Sussex spaniel.
The Sussex spaniel failed on both metrics. Very few people want to use them for work. I have never heard of a blue-collar grouse hunter going out of his way to get a Sussex over a working English springer or working cocker. Although Sussex are nicely natured dogs, it is unlikely that this breed will ever become popular as family pet. It just isn’t cute enough. People like bassets and spaniels, but the combo is a little off-putting.
Fuller’s experiment may have worked for a time, but the show ring distorted his creation. Its breeders lost site of what this breed should be, and time went on, the forces of creative destruction nearly swept the breed away. It exists now a relic, a museum piece that we certainly should examine for what it tells about what can happen to virtually any breed.
Breeds have to adapt to changing conditions. They cannot remain stuck in time. Conformation has to be based upon a reality that can be empirically verified.
And when breeders allow their breeds to wind up in these positions, extinction isn’t a far off possibility. At some point, there won’t be enough genetic diversity in the breed to sustain itself, or the number of people actually breeding these dogs will be so low that it will be impossible to keep things going.
It’s happened before.
It will happen again, and if I were a betting man, that would be my wager on the Sussex spaniel’s future.
