SPANIELS 



THE chief of the spaniels are the setters, but as they no 

 longer claim connection at one end of the group, and as 

 the King Charles and Blenheim spaniels are no longer granted 

 the status of gun-dogs at the other extremity of it, the number 

 of breeds is limited in fact, but unduly enlarged by Stud 

 Book classification. 



The only sporting breeds in reality, although there are 

 more nominally, are the Irish water spaniel, used as a 

 retriever, the English water spaniel, or half-breds of that 

 almost extinct race, of which the curly retriever is a survival, 

 but with a cross ; the clumber, the English springer, the Welsh 

 springer, and the cocker. Field and Sussex spaniels seem to 

 have gone off in work, although they are said to have come 

 on in appearance. There was an outcry that the show field 

 spaniels were bred out of true proportion, and there were 

 reports of the same dogs being observed in two different 

 parishes at the same time. The drain-pipe order of body is 

 not quite as exaggerated as it was before the reformation that 

 occurred about 1898, but the black field spaniels and the 

 Sussex dogs of the shows even now tend to a Dachshund 

 formation. Still, the former are as handsome as dogs can be, 

 and are in every sense spaniels to look at, although mostly 

 too long and heavy for work, and suggesting hound cross by 

 the high angle at which they carry their sterns. The truest 

 bred spaniels when at work carry the stern at an angle of 

 about 45 degrees with the earth, pointing downwards, and not 

 much higher in kennel ; but the majority of show spaniels carry 

 the stern above the level of the back, and consequently 



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