Man and dog met for the first time in the Stone Age, probably eyeing one another suspiciously from either side of an eviscerated mammoth. Who knew then that the wild canine sneaking cautiously to a meal of offal would one day evolve into the spaniel asleep on the couch?
That first meeting with the proto-dog sparked an association that has lasted 14,000 years and has seen dogs bred to all possible shapes, sizes, and colors. Currently, there are some 200 dog breeds in the world, and at one time or another, most of them were hunters.
It's easy to forget that the poodle's ridiculous haircut harkens back to their utilitarian days as retrievers when the ball of fur around the chest kept them warm; while the close-trimmed hindquarters allowed freedom of movement in the water.
Likewise, few people remember that chow chows were once dual-purpose dogs, serving as hunters while being served as, well, chow. Over the centuries, hunting dogs have ranged from giant wolfhounds to 10-pound dachshunds, all bred from the original dog-wolf specifically for the hunt.
Quest for Fido
What happened after that first meeting over the mammoth carcass? How did wolves become dogs? Perhaps cavemen brought wolf pups home as Australian aborigines still do with wild dingoes. What transpired next split the difference between deliberate breeding and natural selection: unable to live with aggressive adult wolves, early wolf owners drove them away or killed them as they reached maturity, keeping only the more tractable individuals at home.
As a result, succeeding wolf-dog generations grew tamer. Adults began to exhibit the submissive behavior usually outgrown by mature wolves: whining, playing, barking, seeking affection, and groveling--all traits which proved advantageous when socializing with people.
These early dogs also retained the floppy ears and certain cranial dimensions of juvenile wolves, while becoming smaller overall. Our dogs today are basically wolves stuck in permanent adolescence, a phenomenon known to scientists as paedomorphism.
Dogs and wolves, by the way, remain close enough relatives to interbreed. Aristotle reported that, in the ancient world, dogs in heat were often tethered out in the wild to be bred by wolves.
Tails from the Crypt
Hunting scenes abound in Egyptian tombs; paintings show at least six distinct breeds of dog, including short-legged dachshund types, coursing hounds, even one dog resembling a modern pointer. An intriguing 3,000-year-old skeleton found at Windmill Hill in England also looks very much like a pointer, and probably worked as a stock and hunting dog.
The dogs that would become our gun dogs can trace their lineage back to the mastifflike animals originating in the mountains stretching across Europe from Tibet to Spain. Mountain shepherds kept mastiffs, possibly derived from the Tibetan wolf, to protect their flocks. Neolithic trade and migration spread dogs of the mastiff group throughout the ancient world.
Later, Roman legions took Molossians--giant mastiffs from Greece and Albania used for hunting wild oxen--with them on their travels, allowing them to intermix with local dogs. Similarly, wandering Gypsies carried with them a smaller mastiff, the pointerlike dalmatian.
All of these mastiff-type dogs shared a number of physical traits found in modern gun dogs and scent-hunting hounds: a short muzzle, large, floppy ears, a tendency to produce fine coats, and, most important to us, a definite "stop"--that is, a sharply angled break between brow and muzzle indicating large frontal sinuses and, therefore, a keen sense of smell.
Then, as today, outcrossing dogs to improve the breeds was common. The Roman poet Grattius, living at the time of Augustus, wrote in Cynegeticus: "an Umbrian dam will give to the slower-witted Gaul a lively intelligence; the Gelonians will inherit courage from a Hyrcanian sire, and the Calydonian having its vices corrected by a Molossian father will get rid of its great defect, a foolish tongue. So do we cull something from every flower while kindly nature seconds our efforts."
Centuries of interbreeding and outcrossing make it virtually impossible to draw a direct line back through time showing the origin of almost any sporting breed. However, we do know that the Romans brought Molossian dogs to the Pyrenees, where they mingled with the local mountain dogs. The resulting cross became the direct ancestor of all spaniels, which includes not just the flushing spaniels but water spaniels and setters as well.
Going to the Dogges
While pointerlike dogs existed in antiquity, the act of pointing dates to the Middle Ages. The instinct to point is merely an exaggeration of a dog's natural tendency to pause for an instant before springing on its prey.
Pointing dogs preceded bird guns, although today it's hard to imagine one without the other. Before firearms, pointers in England and continental Europe found coveys of quail and partridge, then remained staunch while huntsmen threw a large net over both their quarry and the dog. Some woodcuts show pointing dogs wearing a sort of muzzle with a stick protruding out past the nose, presumably to prevent the dog from grabbing birds.
Gun dogs as we know them today existed by 1570. In that year, John Caius published De Canibus Britanicis in London, showing pointers (index), spaniels (hispaniolus), water spaniels (aquaticus), and bloodhounds (sanguinarius) performing the same functions they serve now.
Among the modern sporting dogs, only the retrievers--Labs, goldens, flat-coats, and curly-coats--had not yet been developed. The French boasted two retrievers in the braque Francais and braque d'Auvergne, but in the British Isles of Queen Elizabeth, retrieving remained the province of the water spaniels.
In Part Two, a look at the modern hunting breeds.
Copyright (c) 1997 Philip Bourjaily. All rights reserved.
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