CHAPTER VIII.

THE FLAT OR WAVY COATED BLACK

RETRIEVER.

THIS handsome and kindly animal, so say its admirers, is to be the sporting dog of the future. Whether this will prove the case or not only that future can decide, but, taking a line from the progress it has made in public esteem during the past dozen years or so, it is a prognostication likely enough to prove correct. Here we have a creature made for use; handsome, kindly in disposition, obedient, easy to rear, breeding true to type, and well answering the purpose for which it is intended, so there can be little fear of retrogression on its part. Though the curly-coated dog had obtained the advantage at the start, he is coming in but a very bad second. The causes of this have already been alluded to.

The flat or wavy coated retriever is now pretty well distributed throughout the British Isles, and few shooting parties leave home unaccompanied by a well trained specimen or two, which are, however,

actually more useful in turnips and on comparatively open ground, than they are in thick covert and tangled brushwood. Their coats are fine, and certainly not made for the purpose of resisting thorns and briers, and, so far as the experience of the writer goes, their one fault lies in their indisposition to face thick covert, and in whins and gorse I have seen them actually useless. Still, I have been told that there are some strains that I believe will do as well in the roughest covert as the curly dog. A friend of mine was taking exception to the lack of perseverance a flat-coated retriever displayed in making out the line of a winged pheasant that had run about some bramble bushes; at the same time praising his own dog, with a curly coat on him as shaggy as that of a Herdwick sheep. There requires to be a happy mean between the two, for, where one would not face the brambles at all, the other would, and had to be cut out of them, the strong prickles holding him fast as if he were in a net. On the conclusion of each day's shooting it would take two or three hours to free my friend's dog from the "burrs" that had become entangled in his coat. A hard, wavy coated retriever, clad in a jacket not unlike those possessed by the German griffons, would be useful in a rough country.

The first introduction of the flat-coated retriever

to the show bench was at Cremorne in 1873, but in the first volume of the Kennel Club Stud Book, printed in 1874, the two varieties are classed together. He was a much bigger and coarser dog than he is now. Some of the early specimens were pure and simple little Newfoundlands, and it has taken a few years' careful work to bring the wavy retriever to what it is at the present time. Not too big but just big enough. Our grandfathers said, "Oh! we want a big retriever, a strong 'un; one that can jump a gate with an 8lb. hare in its mouth, and gallop with one at full speed." This is not so now. A comparatively small dog is well able to carry a hare, and shooting is so precise that puss does not run as far as she did, when properly hit. Dogs are not made to assist bad shooters to fill a bag; and a man who cannot, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, stop a hare before she has run seventy yards, ought not to fire at another. And you do not require to have a special dog for that one chance in a hundred.

Such animals as Dr. Bond Moore used to show were of enormous size and coarse to boot, and I am sure would not be looked at in the show ring today. If any of the blood of this strain remains it must be in very small quantities. One or two of his dogs had ugly light eyes, which, objectionable as

it may be in other dark-coloured dogs, is more than trebly so in a retriever. The two Wyndhams which came earlier were better dogs, especially Mr. Meyrick's, that was winning at the leading shows from 1864 to 1870. Mr. W. Brailsford brought out the other Wyndham, this in 1860, a dog which was evidently almost pure Labrador, and, like its namesake, has no pedigree in the Stud Book. Still, both dogs were successful on the show bench, so were much used, and their blood is to be found in most of the strains at the present day. Another excellent dog of the earlier period was Major Allison's Victor, which he had purchased at Edinburgh, and he, too, was without a pedigree so far as could be aṣcertained, and partook more of the Labrador character than that of the modern strains. It is interesting to note how true to type these pedigreeless dogs have proved, and do so at the present time. For instance, Mr. L. A. Shuter, of near Farningham, in Kent, some time ago purchased a bitch in the streets at Bristol, and could not obtain the slightest trace as to what her sire and dam were. Still, so good was she that he formed an alliance between her and his dog Darenth. The result was puppies so good that they won prizes in keen competition directly they came to be shown. Such cases are, however, exceptional, and must not be considered when mentioned