Breeds Week 7 Flashcards
Brittany
Country: France
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom:
Facts: White and orange/liver. Brittany is named for the westernmost region of France, where French hunters developed what is today considered one of the world’s most versatile bird dogs. In 1934, the AKC registered its first dog of the breed, then called the Brittany Spaniel. The AKC breed named was shortened to Brittany in 1982.
Clumber
Country: England
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: card, hand strip, clipper trim
Facts: Clumber Spaniels are powerful bird dogs of heavy bone, built long and low, with a massive head. The dense coat is primarily white, with sparse lemon or orange markings. The Clumber was among the AKC’s nine charter breeds when the organization was founded in 1884.
Cocker Spaniel- American
Country: England
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: Card, hand strip, clipper trim
Facts: They were developed as hunting dogs, but Cockers gained their wide popularity as all-around companions. The Cocker is the AKC’s smallest sporting spaniel, standing about 14 to 15 inches. The Cocker’s American heyday came in the 1950s. The Cocker was the AKC’s most popular breed of the decade. It was the era of Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp” and Vice President Richard Nixon’s Cocker, named Checkers, who helped change the course of U.S. political history.
English Cocker Spaniel
Country: England
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: Card, hand strip, clipper trim
Facts: The Cocker is the AKC’s smallest sporting spaniel, standing about 14 to 15 inches. The English was characterized as being taller and with a longer head than its American cousin, with a coat that was not as profuse. The English and Canadian kennel clubs registered the varieties as separate breeds beginning in 1940, and the AKC followed suit in 1946.
English Setter
Country: England
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: clipper, hand strip
Facts: Freckle pup. One of the AKC’s four British setters created to work on the distinctly different terrains of England, Ireland, and Scotland. The Setter was developed to lay down quietly, or “set,” when they located game birds. This style of hunting at the time would then require the hunter to cast a net in the area, sometimes covering the dog as well, and flush and harvest the birds that were ensnared.
Irish Setter
Country: Ireland
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: card/hand strip, clipper trim
Facts: Red/Brown only. Irish huntsmen of the 1800s bred their sleek, rangy “Red Setters” to move freely and swiftly, the better to cover ground in the wide, flat countryside of the Emerald Isle. The most famous Irish Setter of all time, however, was fictional, the title character of Jim Kjelgaard’s 1945 novel “Big Red.” President Richard Nixon’s Irish Setter, King Timahoe, was named for a small town in Ireland that was the homeland of the president’s ancestors.
Field
Country: England
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: card/clipper
Facts: Liver or Black/Roan. The sweet and sensitive Field Spaniel is famously docile, but vigorous and game for anything when at play or in the field. The U.S. breed standard calls these tranquil house dogs ‘unusually docile,’ but they are nonetheless playful and enjoy a good backyard romp.
Flat Coated Retriever
Country: England
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: b/b, minor trimming
Facts: Black/Liver only. The Peter Pan of the Sporting Group, the forever-young Flat-Coated Retriever is a gundog of relatively recent origin. Flat-Coats were first bred in the mid-1800s, a relatively recent development in the AKC universe, where many breeds go back to antiquity. Aside from its good looks, the coat is highly functional: it protects these superb retrievers from harsh weather, icy water, and punishing ground cover.
German Shorthaired Pointer
Country: Germany
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: b/b
Facts: German hunters spent generations crossing various breeds until they perfected this versatile bird dog sometime in the 1800s. They were so successful that, to this day, GSPs are among the top-winning breeds in competitive hunting events. The GSP has been hunted with success on a variety of quarry: gamebirds, possum, rabbit, raccoon, and even deer. With his webbed feet and sleek but sturdy construction, the GSP burnishes his résumé as one of dogdom’s finest swimmers. Emblematic of the breed’s eager versatility was Marvin, a GSP from North Carolina, who in late 2013 achieved his 75th AKC title.
German Wirehaired Pointer
Country: Germany
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: b/b, hand strip
Facts: The name German Wirehaired Pointer is the English translation of the German breed name, Deutsch-Drahthaar. The wiry coat serves as a waterproof suit of armor, and the shaggy brows and beard protect the eyes and face from the lacerations of thorny brush and brier. North American sportsmen began importing GWPs in the 1920s, and the AKC admitted the breed to its studbook in 1959.
Gordon Setter
Country: Scotland
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: clipper, card/hand strip
Facts: Black with tan or mahogany. The Gordon Setter, the black avenger of the Highlands, is a substantial bird dog named for a Scottish aristocrat- Alexander Gordon, the Fourth Duke of Gordon and a setter fancier (d. 1827), who founded a kennel of “Black and Tan Setters” at Gordon Castle. In 1878, the breed was registered in America as well and recognized by the AKC in 1884. Eight years after that, the AKC changed the breed’s name from the Gordon Castle Setter to the Gordon Setter. It was not until January 1, 1924 that the Kennel Club accepted the Gordon Setter name as well.
Nova Scotia Duck Tolling
Country: Canada
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: b/b
Facts: Red/Deep Golden and White. The smallest of the AKC’s retrievers. Also called the “Decoy Dog,” is a small, energetic retriever bred by 19th-century sportsmen in the Little River District of Nova Scotia’s Yarmouth County (the “Yarmouth Toller” and “Little River Duck Dog” were once alternate breed names). When the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever gained AKC approval in 2003, it became the breed with the longest name in the AKC Stud Book.
Sussex
Country: England
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: b/b, hand strip/card
Facts: Golden Liver ONLY. Sometime in the 1700s, sportsmen in the English county of Sussex developed a spaniel whose short legs and burly torso were perfectly suited to hunting feathered game while plowing through the region’s heavy clay soil, dense underbrush, and thick hedgerows. Because the dog was built so low and the cover was so high, Sussex developed a language of barks and babbling to mark their location to human huntsmen. And to this day, Sussex tend to be more vocal than other spaniels.
Welsh Springer
Country: England
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: card/hand strip
Facts: Red/White. According to leading authorities, Welsh Springer Spaniels are the oldest of Britain’s spaniels, descendants of the original spaniels of the Iberian Peninsula (the word spaniel is derived from “Spaniard”). Exactly how these dogs traveled in ancient times from Spain to Wales is one of those canine mysteries that historians chalk up as “lost in the mists of history,” but Welshie-type dogs appear in British art and literature going back some 250 years BC. Welsh and English Springers emerged as separate breeds in the early 1900s.
Wire Pointing Griffon
Country: Holland
Group: Sporting
Correct Groom: hand strip
Facts: In the 1800s, sportsmen of Continental Europe were obsessed with breeding hunting dogs of great versatility. Among them was Dutchman Eduard Korthals, son of a well-to-do banker. Through judicious crosses of several breeds, Korthals developed a dog that could work as a pointer on dry land and as an excellent water retriever, complete with webbed toes for swimming. Korthals refined his breed while working in Germany and, finally, France. Since Korthals’ time, partisans have argued whether Griffs are properly a Dutch or a French breed.
