The Spaniel. 403 



curly-coated water variety that our grandfathers 

 valued so highly, or for the equally useful and 

 smaller dog, some twenty pounds weight or so, that 

 would with equal facility " fetch " a stick that had 

 been thrown into the water, or retrieve a rabbit with 

 a hind leg broken that in vain struggled to reach 

 the sanctuary of its burrow. 



With, perhaps, few exceptions, the chief being the 

 Clumber and Irish variety, our show spaniel of to-day 

 is not a sportsman's dog a fancy creature merely, 

 whose coat requires as much grooming as that of a 

 Yorkshire terrier, and the slightest waviness thereon 

 would be as fatal to its chances of success before 

 some judges as if it had but one eye, and unable to 

 see with that one. Crooked forelegs, malformed 

 elbows and shoulders, are often allowed to pass 

 muster in the show ring, but a curly or wavy coat 

 seldom. 



Personally I should disqualify dogs with crooked, 

 disproportioned fore legs, however long they might 

 be in body, however " near the ground " (meaning, 

 however short the legs), and however straight the 

 coat. These abnormally formed dogs " long and 

 low " their owners love to call them have completely 

 usurped the position that the old fashioned field 

 spaniel formerly occupied, and the modern edition is 

 neither so handsome nor so useful as the original 



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