(From Pietoro’s photobucket)
The fellow in the center is the head keeper at Clumber Park, where these dogs were tightly held for generations.
The dog on the right is a champion.
My guess is its weight is somewhere around 40-50 pounds. It is certainly not a massive 85-pounder.
They don’t look like English springers, and I’m sure they didn’t act like them either.
But they sure weren’t small, white St. Bernards masquerading as spaniels.
All the working pictures of Clumber spaniels don’t look as retarded.
Where did the Clumber Club lady go? I assumed this was going to be an interesting discussion.
Those 1902 dogs really look the business, don’t they?
Those of us with a long-held commitment to the revival of Clumber spaniels as working gundogs should be grateful to Retrieverman on at least two counts. One, for unearthing a picture that shows us as no words can what real working Clumbers were like at a time when they were dominant in early field trials – even over English springers. In size and type – note the long muzzle, no beetling brows, modest coat length, waistline and limited size – these ghosts from the record books come to life looking very akin to the kind of Clumbers bred for the field again today. They stand as confirmation that the prevailing “show type”, in the UK and US particularly, is an aberration and a caricature of a working breed, created and developed by people with no understanding of the breed’s heritage and purpose, no real interest in its health and enduring characteristics, and encouraged by the Kennel Clubs. This brings me to my second reason for offering Retrieverman thanks, which is for exposing the issue of size and exaggeration, the first American observer to echo my concerns in many years. This issue is more than an irrelevance for the breed, it is a question of harm. In the UK, the breed standard was changed by the KC four times in the century after that photograph was taken, each time defining a weight increase and finishing with a Clumber twice as big as it started. I hope Retrieverman will contact me directly at jd@chelgate.com, as I would like to share my views and experience. I have been inseparably involved with the restoration of the breed for 36 years. I co-founded the Working Clumber Spaniel Society. I have written articles and letters to newspapers and magazines. I have given evidence to a government inquiry into health and breeding of pedigree dogs. I have gained field trial awards with more Clumbers than anyone in the breed’s history, and have five specimens in the kennels looking remarkably like the Beechgrove dogs in the photo. Thank you again. James Darley.
Nice photo.
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