276 The Dog Book 



Cleveland. From this partial list of owners it will be seen that they were 

 owned in the ducking districts of the West, and when these owners and 

 others like them lost interest in the breed no one else seemed willing to 

 fill their places. At one time we thought that the giving up of Irish water 

 spaniels was on account of sportsmen preferring the shorter-coated Chesa- 

 peake, for a full-sized Irish spaniel is by no means a pleasant neighbour in 

 a boat or blind when he comes in from a swim. That solution would not 

 answer, however, for the Chesapeake was as scarce throughout the western 

 ducking grounds of Illinois and Missouri as the Irish. Then it became 

 apparent that the times had changed; our sportsmen in place of accepting 

 what English writers advised in the way of dogs, formed their own con- 

 clusions and adopted what they wanted and found useful. 



Our duck hunters learned that a dog was not an absolute necessity, 

 as was the case in quail or grouse shooting, and as soon as that was realised 

 the boom of the Irish water spaniel terminated. The bulk of the duck 

 shooting is done on still water in the West, and as Mr. Joseph A. Graham 

 aptly quotes a Missouri ducker: "It is as easy to pick up the ducks as 

 the decoys when through shooting." That is the reason for the decline of 

 the Irish water spaniel in this country, and a duck hunter, when he wants 

 a dog, takes anything that will retrieve. There are plenty of setters, 

 spaniels and half-breeds that will do that and be useful in other ways. 

 It is almost as a curiosity that we must now view the Irish water spaniel, 

 and not as an essential in wild-fowl shooting, except in certain situations, 

 such as tidal or running waters, where quick recovery of shot birds is 

 necessary, and in weather which calls for a strong dog, well clothed and 

 able to do the hard work of retrieving under such circumstances. 



Of the dogs of fame in this country, there were some which would 

 make many of the later-day champions look decidedly common. Such 

 a dog was Mr. Olcott's Barney, though it was to Mr. Holabird, of Valparaiso, 

 Ind., that we owed the introduction of this excellent dog and his mate 

 Judy, both from Mr. Skidmore's kennels. Another good one was Mike, 

 also by the same sire, Skidmore's Shamrock. Barney was the better by a 

 good deal, but he had not the perpetual youth of Mike, whose maximum 

 catalogue age was five years for some time. From these two dogs there 

 were many descendants in the West, for Mike, after being shown by Mr. 

 W. B. Wells, of Chatham, passed into the hands of Olcott and Whitman 

 and then to Mr. Olcott, as the Excelsior Irish Water Spaniel Club. Mr. 



