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CHAPTER IX.

OTHER RETRIEVERS.

THERE are other retrievers than the two varieties

already mentioned. Some years ago a so-called "Russian Retriever" very often appeared in the variety classes at our shows-a huge, unwieldy creature, certainly more like being successful in carrying off a sheep rather than in retrieving a snipe. He would weigh pretty well on to a hundred pounds, was covered with long ringlets, and appeared more nearly allied to the French poodle than to anything else, and I believe, in fact, that he was a poodle. Usually he was black in colour, sometimes brown. It was said this "Russian" was introduced here for the purpose of "crossing," to give size and strength. When already our retrievers were bigger and coarser than we required them, there is no wonder his services were refused.

The common brown retriever that we see running about the streets, neither curled nor wavy, nor smooth, is a sort of nondescript animal we can well

do without. He is usually snappish and ill-natured, and, when not looking in the gutters for a living, may be found chained up to a kennel in somebody's back yard. Those who own a dog of this kind are recommended to exchange it for a nice little terrier, which will not only cost the owner less in the way of food, but be not so liable to bite his neighbour, his wife, or his children. When anyone is bitten by a dog the odds are two to one that the injury was caused by one of these common brown dogs. An injustice is done to the Emerald Isle when they are called "Irish retrievers," and this frequently happens. There are black dogs, with white on their breasts, of similar type and character. No doubt the disrepute in which even the well-bred retriever is held in many quarters, arises from the ill-fame which attends this cousin of his.

There are, however, brown retrievers that have better reputations, some are curly-coated, others wavy or straight coated. The latter are repeatedly produced from black parents, are very handsome, and equally useful as any other. Personally I have a great fancy for this pale or chocolate brown, wavy-coated retriever. He is a novelty, and if he shows dirt more than his black parents, his coat is equally glossy, and he is quite as good tempered and sociable. The white or pale primrose

coloured eye is objectionable in this variety as it is in the black. Mr. A. Money-Wigram showed an excellent specimen called Merle, which won second in a class for "retrievers any other colour than black," at the Kennel Club Show in June, 1889, and first in the same class in 1892. It is rather odd that in the Kennel Club Stud Book for 1892 the awards in several of these retriever classes at the Club Show are altogether omitted.

One of the prettiest retrievers I ever saw, and one of the best all round in coat, curl, docility of expression and otherwise, was Mr. J. H. Salter's handsome brown bitch Beauty III., and she was not misnamed. She was so good as to be able to win even against the blacks; her coat remained crisp and hard, and in disposition and temperament she was quite an example to other dogs. Beauty was born of pure brown parents, her sire being Prince Rupert, dam Pearl. Rupert was a well known good dog on the bench, winning, like his daughter, even when pitted against the black variety, and it is rather odd that his sire, King Koffee, black, usually had a brown puppy in each litter when mated with Pearl. Rupert, up to the time he was ten years of age, was able to undergo a day's hard work in the Essex marshes, would plunge into the water in the coldest weather, go into the sea under any conditions,

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