This image of two curlies comes from Rawdon Lee’s A History and Description of the Modern Dogs of Great Britain and Ireland (Sporting Division-Vol. 1) (1891) (pg. 178).
The dog in the foreground appears to be a bitch. I think I can discern mammae on underside. I could be seeing things, but I think I see teats.
This “bitch” appears to be very similar to a Labrador and closer to “Joby” in appearance.
The dog in the background cannot be fully examined, but it looks like this animal is a bit longer in the leg. Perhaps it is closer to how we envision the modern curly.
Most of the depictions and photos of the nineteenth century curlies point to them being much heavier built animals than the modern dogs are. They look more like Labradors with curly hair.
It is difficult to find curly photos that show the size of the animals, but it appears that many of the the dogs were closer to the Labrador in size as well as shape.
This breed is called the oldest of retrievers because it was the first to standardize. One cannot maintain this breed’s coat in an open breeding system. So it was likely the first to standardize from the St. John’s water dog.
Temperament-wise, it may be closer to the old St. John’s water dog than the others, for it seems to share some characteristics with the Chesapeake, a breed to which it may not be directly related. It is often suggested that curlies are in the Chesapeake bloodline, but curlies have never been common in the US. Retrievers didn’t become widespread in the US until the twentieth century, which was decades after the curly-coat had fallen from whatever grace it might have had in the British fancy. I think it is unlikely that there is a direct relationship between the two, and the similarities between Chessies and curlies is the result of them both being early derivatives of the St. John’s water dog.
Flat-coats, goldens, and Labs underwent much more improvement in the UK than these two breeds. They were dogs that were adapted for estate shoots and field trials– which pursued game mostly on land. Because curlies and Chessies were always waterfowl dogs and were foten the dogs of either poachers or market hunters, the dogs never underwent any “improvements” for trialling or estate shoots. They needed a tough dog that could swim in all conditions and take a good grip on a duck. They didn’t need a super biddable dog with a very soft mouth.
These are likely traits that one would have found in the water cur from Newfoundland. It had to be willing to go into water that was quite cold and quite rough, and it had to take a good grip on the nets and lines. Otherwise, it would lose it in the swells.
When the dogs came to England, those that become popular among the shooting gentry had to be super biddable and have the most tender mouths. It wasn’t considered right for a dog to crunch a pheasant or hare, and because the dogs were typically working on land, there was no need for the dog to hold onto its quarry with such a tight grip.
That is why curlies and Chessies have such a reputation for hardmouth– perhaps it is now undeserved.
But I think that if we were going to see what a St. John’s water dog acted like, one should probably look at the curly and the Chessie, rather than the Labrador, which it so closely resembles.
These two breeds seem to share “primitive” traits that are not shared with the other retrievers at all. They both will guard. They both will swim with little encouragement. Neither is particularly celebrated in retriever trials or tests, but both are still quite functional as working dogs.
