2 The Sporting Dog 



IS used to an appreciable extent in practical sport. 

 They are kept as fancy varieties and as compan- 

 ions. In fashion and on the benches the semi- 

 sporting dogs have forged ahead fast within a 

 few years, and now collectively outnumber in the 

 studbooks and shows the actual servants of the 

 gun and leash. Attractive they are, too, and 

 well worthy of care and study ; but only a volu- 

 minous and exhaustive treatise would need to 

 describe them in detail, since they do not differ 

 at all from their cousins across the water, where 

 the breeds have been elaborately set forth by 

 competent authorities and where the standards 

 for both countries have been fixed. Boston ter- 

 riers alone have an American status all their own, 

 and they are scarcely sporting dogs. 



In what does the sporting dog proper differ in 

 America from the British dog of the same breed } 

 Greyhounds not at all, as yet, though if the wide 

 prairies had remained unfenced, there is a chance 

 that the climate and the jack rabbit, a faster and 

 stiffer traveller than the English hare, might have 

 caused a definite modification. Water retrievers 

 not much, though the Chesapeake Bay dog is an 

 American development, in form and raiment quite 

 unlike any British breed. 



It is foxhounds and shooting dogs which have 

 become, under American conditions, something 

 essentially different from what the British sports- 



